In APenglish5 today we were discussing what is called a "level three question" which is basically an open ended question on philosophy that is derived from literary themes and situations. The question was (without references before)... What is faith?
My initial thought, my Freudian slip if you will, was "blind-belief." My conscious quickly took over however to tell me that it was a, "strong belief." Perhaps we should listen to our intuition more. The church teaches that faith should be without doubt but that doubt fortifies faith. My secret: I've never been without doubt. (And I don't think I ever want to be.)
My belief in God has slipped to the point that if you could see it as a line on a graph, I have recently slipped below the zero mark and lay somewhere close to the top, but just below. I feel I should almost say I have disbelief with doubts saying, "maybe God is real and maybe he does care", (the reverse of the last 6 years).
And tonight Ben, a Watershed employee I work with, came in to talk as he usually does. He told me all my music was about sex. I laughed and told him I went in weekly patterns of listening to music either about sex, drugs, or God. He told me this made since because they were the three most incredible feelings capable of humanity.
Suddenly, they all seemed on the same plane to me. That they are all just fixes for the emotionally strung-out and... weak hearted. I thought briefly then of the Buddhist ideology, of Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Deism, ext and I wondered... is religion a hoax? Is this a drug we've come to accept? Is this an orgasm of entire fantasy? Is it a socially acceptable cop out into a utopia we are unable to achieve on earth?
It seems logic is above this. If I can rationalize my way out I wont be waiting around for the next fix - for Sunday night, for a high or a shot, for sexual attention. While one day I persue one, the next day I persue another waiting until God, drugs, or sex satisfies. In a small way they all do, but in the biggest way, they dont.
Good feelings currupt us - they are a lust we all search after. Does it matter which medium we satsify this hunger in? Is it really healthy to have faith? I am full of questions and scared of their answers. For the past six years religion has defined me, and suddenly, I don't know if God is real.
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4 comments:
René Descartes ring a bell?
I love you, and I'm not entirely sure if you want to talk about this... but I would love nothing better to do this weekend!
i think my head just literally spun in circles, probably because i would be lying if i didn't either agree or admit that at some point i did agree with everything here. oy.
we should talk sometime.
when you say
"is it a socially acceptable cop out into a utopia we are unable to achieve on earth?"
i think the thing to remember there is that the said utopia is not an actual possibility. it's an ideal, a goal we are to keep striving for.
if we could acheive a utopian state, we wouldn't need God.
very interesting points though...what's the verse about faith? something along the lines of being sure of what we hope for and knowing what we do not see.
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