Faith is but one of our shields
God is not dead! He has merely moved backstage...
We live in an age of uncertainty. Politics has failed to replace god, and now the people are lost in a consumerist haze, desperately searching for meaning where it cannot be found. It is as if god has been disproved, as if faith and religion has been made useless by the super-swift advance of science and technology. This is all due to a massive misunderstanding.
Science and Faith can live together side by side, and so they should. Science can observe facts, create machines, cure diseases. Yet none of these things provide people with any greater meaning, with any purpose. To say that science displaces faith is to say that one will no longer eat aubergines because one has found jam! Science and Faith have two completely different functions, and to say that one cancels-out the other is folly. The role of faith in telling people how the physical universe works has come to an end. God is no longer our microscope. However, in the greater context of meaning, and of providing the desperate with hope, God is very much alive and well.
Granted, we once lived in an era dominated by faith, and it was disastrous for humanity. Faith can be a retarding force on the power of knowledge, it can be misused by authoratative characters to dominate weak minds, it can be dangerous. Yet on the whole, faith does a positive service to humanity; provided it does not get in the way of progress!
Faith inspires magnificent works of art and architecture, poetry and literature. Faith encourages charity, brings together communities; it provides a vital social good which cannot be filled by a secular institution. Why? Why but for the fact that we humans enjoy a bit of mysticism, of 'razzle and/or dazzle' in our lives, a bit of transcendent magic! No secular institution can provide this special appeal to the masses; only the magic of religion can convince certain people to get out of the house to help the needy. Furthermore, a lot of the high and mighty minds have little truck with the 'smaller folk', so busy are they in their intellectual nests writing essays that can be understood by perhaps a dozen people in the world. Faith on the other hand, has always been accessible to everybody, it is easy to grasp and can be distilled into memorable slogans.
So, should we give up our faith? No, only if we have too high expectations of it. Just because certain religious authorities have been proven wrong time and time again on certain matters (such as the sun orbiting the earth, creation theory, the age of the universe, and so on) it does not mean that the feeling of hope and security provided by faith is affected! If one maintains that the earth is flat because one also wants to hold on to ones faith, then one is a fool. Cut away the gangrenous limb of dead faith and enjoy the good bits, what!
By St.Zagarus
