MITRA: Unveiling the mystery of faith in faith
Having written for the Faith column in Kamloops This Week for years, it is time to write something about faith itself.
In the remarkable story Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen says: “I’m just 101, five months and a day.”
Alice replies promptly: “I can’t believe that!”
The Queen says: “Can’t you? Try again. Draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
That seems to be the way many think of belief and faith.
However, the Queen’s attitude was not one of faith but of credulity.
On the other hand, faith is that quality of life which gives reality to things unseen, substance to things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1).
We live in a “faith world.”
It is a world so constructed that it answers back and responds to faith, a world that echoes what we say and what we do.
To the cynic, the world is cynical.
To the tender-hearted, the world is sweet and gentle.
And, to the tough-hearted, it is cruel and harsh.
The world answers back to our faith.
It trusts when we trust it. It responds to our confidence.
Faith is man’s highest venture.
Poet John Greenleaf Whittier puts it this way: “The steps of faith fall on the seeming void and find the rock beneath.”
It is a seeming void on which we set our faith.
Beneath us, however, is the unseen reality — and faith gives it substance.
From this point of view, faith is the great creative force in the world.
Psychologists tell us it is according to our faith that we discover values.
We should get along far better in life if we had faith in those about us.
Parents would succeed better with their children, teachers with their students and preachers with their congregations.
It is also the way science works.
Every laboratory is a temple of faith.
Science throws a bridge out into the unseen, and rests it upon the invisible.
The scientist is a man of faith, of imagination, dreaming his dreams of what may be and what must be, working with the invisible forces that co-operate with him and, at last, giving substance to that which was only hoped for.
By faith, Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravitation.
By faith, John Herschel found the unknown planet Neptune.
By faith, Percival Lowell saw the planet Pluto and died in faith, believing what he had not seen, but which later generations since have.
By faith, Albert Einstein found the law of relativity.
By faith, two young Cambridge physicists discovered the secret of atom.
By faith, science believes the world is made not only of things that appear, but of things unseen.
The world should be divided into two parts:
• A part that can be measured by the foot rules of ordinary engineer or mechanic; and,
• The part that takes in all those things which cannot be measured except by the golden measuring rod that is in the hands of the man who is the angel (as in Revelations).
There is a world of things and a world of thoughts, a world of science and a world of art, a world of substance and a world of values.
We cannot add up in one column all the values with which we come in contact.
The scientist who demands religion submit to scientific tests is as mistaken as the theologian who demands science should be theologically interpreted.
We cannot bring everything in the world under the same common denominator.
God is the greatest seeker.
Physicist and philosoper Blaise Pascal has put it in an unforgettable paradox: “Thou wouldst not be seeking me, if Thou hadst not found me.”
Faith in the realm of religion is not different from any other form of faith, except its objective is different.
Faith throws a bridge toward God and finds the divine reality.
We are wrong when we say we must verify God and prove Him first and then we will have faith in Him.
That is not the way knowledge is gained.
It is not the way scientists or businessmen work.
Religion, like science says, throw out your bridge, trust your faith, put your hypotheses to test, experiment with your dream, your hope and by faith you will understand.
As scientist Thomas Huxley said: “Sit down before nature as a little child or you will learn nothing.”
narayanmitra@hotmail.com
KTW welcomes submissions to its Faith page. Columns should be between 600 and 800 words in length and include a headshot of the author, along with a short bio on the writer. Submissions can be sent via email to
editor@kamloopsthisweek.com.
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