Faith + Reason = Truth

A year ago today, I posted on this blog. My first post in 4 years. I noted how I was struck that inspiration always (and only?) strikes in January, through no planning or effort of my own, and here we are yet again. Full disclosure: 2024 was unusual: I doubled my post count for the year by composing a June review of the Battle of Pavia Tapestries exhibit at Fort Worth’s Kimbell Museum (which subsequently moved on to San Francisco; this was a MAGNIFICENT exhibit!).

The new year is perfect for reflecting after the holidays when things finally settle down and give way to normalcy. Not so much this year, however. After losing my wife’s sister’s husband to cancer 4 weeks ago, my wife’s mother passed away on Friday. She was 81. It can be said of her passing that she is truly in a better place, having been in a hospice bed in the bedroom of her own home for the past 13 months. Something kept her hanging on, until she no longer could.

It seems to be a common thing, people getting through the holidays and then letting go, and there are obvious reasons for why this happens. With Jane, she was a fighter with seemingly nothing left to fight for, who proceeded to fight for 13 months after being sent home in early December 2023 with no hope to live. Christmas 2023 was a long shot; really, looking back, she was given no shot at all. But as she continued to live and we continued to care for her, knowing she would never be able to sit up on her own, let alone get out of the bed, each day became a gift. If we are honest, we can say that we did not always look at it in those exact terms, at least not every minute of every day that we spent with her. It’s hard. It’s inconvenient. It’s hopeless. It puts the lives of the caregivers on hold, be it for a week or a month or a year.

And then, slowly then suddenly, it happens. Then, and only then, are we afforded the luxury of looking back with nothing but thanks, feeling above all, grateful. Grateful for her life, grateful for her death, and grateful for her renewed life with her Lord and Savior.

Thank you, Nana.

The day finally arrived: Saturday morning, June 15, 2024. The lecture auditorium at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

Listening to the world's foremost expert on medieval and Renaissance tapestries, a gentleman who has earned the moniker of "Tapestry Tom" (aka Thomas P. Campbell of Oxford, the Met, and now San Francisco's museums), exceeded all of my lofty expectations. Envious of one who had afforded himself the luxury of dedicating his life to the pursuit of something not of this world ("this world" being comprised of both place AND time), I was also keenly aware that I could have just as well done so, were it not for my younger self prioritizing the pursuit of immediate financial reward above a lifetime of personal and professional fulfillment.

The Battle of Pavia, near Milan, was part of the wars around the Italian Peninsula in the late medieval/early Renaissance period. Everyone wanted a piece of Italy, but the two major belligerents were the kings of France and Spain, Francis I and Charles I, respectively. Charles also happened to hold the title of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (not I, but V) for good measure, and his coffers were overflowing with the ongoing plunder of overwhelming riches from New Spain. He had money to burn on mercenaries, and burn he did. But Francis I (or "Francois Premier" as Tapestry Tom's British accented voice repeatedly referenced him) was a formidable opponent. The battle came down to guns, specifically arquebuses, triumphing over armor, and it was over quickly. Charles had them, Francis did not. What remains are the exquisite tapestries that were created to commemorate the conflict, as they have done for the last 500 years. In fact, this first visit of the 7 Battle of Pavia tapestries to the U.S. will still be in America on the 500th anniversary of the battle in February 2025 (the exhibit will grace first Fort Worth, then San Francisco, and finally Houston, before making its way back home to Italy).

The tapestries are enormous, 28 feet wide by 14 feet tall, and breathtakingly detailed. To give yourself an idea of the size, just go step off 28 feet in a large room (which will likely not be wide enough of a room, so find a bigger one) with tall ceilings (which will likely not be tall enough, so find a taller one), then imagine 7 tapestries of this size. With threads of wool, silk, and even gold and silver, only a few people in the world would have had the wealth to produce such a multi-year undertaking by the best weavers and equipment in the world (found only in Brussels due to a variety of factors) as the creation of these works of art and propaganda. Among them were the aforementioned combatants, along with King Henry VIII of England (whose country would have its own invasion by the son of Charles V, Philip II, thwarted 63 years later when the Spanish Armada sank). But what does this have to do with Faith, Reason, and Truth?

These monarchs of Europe, be they Kings, Emperors, or Popes, all derived their legitimacy in one way or another from God. Without that, they would not have had the necessary authority to rule over the people of their realms. Still, they also very much relied on their reason to formulate not only the plans and strategies of warfare, of attack and defense, of diplomacy, of logistics, of alliances; not only those, but also for weaponry and armor. They needed all of their human faculties to create the kingdoms and empires whose achievements and failures have come down to us through the centuries. As for truth, we see once again that any true king would need both faith and reason in order to rule, as has been the case throughout human history. That is the truth.

Once again, January works its magic, and here we are. Writing something on this blog.

The transportive effect of reading what I wrote in the last post, 2 weeks into 2020, is hard to shake. The first paragraphs, along with the ending sentence (“Let’s start this thing!”) could be rewritten verbatim right now and fit perfectly (minus the part about having written thousands of words of a novel last year, which I did not do this time around). But the other words of that final paragraph can be haunting, if permitted:

”So, 2020. Where have you been all my life?”

No such tempting of fate will be attempted here.

Five days in, I am already grateful beyond belief. It is enough that the year began with one of my teams winning, one losing. SO CLOSE to having a ridiculously improbable dream realized, the one where both of my teams play each other for the national championship. But despite a dream year for the Longhorns falling about thirteen yards short at the end of the semifinal, my alma mater’s football team will not be battling my original college football love, Michigan, in Houston for the title. It is now solely up to the Wolverines to finish the job.

And it is enough that my family was able simply to be together for the holidays, and that my wife’s mother is still with us despite all prior indications to the contrary (never underestimate the will to fight, no matter what the doctors and nurses tell you). We never know how long we have with our loved ones, young or old, and this holiday season has been a daily proof of that reality. From the day we took her to the hospital for some general unwellness two days before Thanksgiving, to the weeks-long struggle for her very life, to the somewhat stable condition she is now in.

The truth is, no person knows how long any of us has. The only one who truly knows is God, and for us and our faith in that all-knowing, all-encompassing plan and the One who created it, that is enough.

The mercy of the Father is infinite. We know this. But WHY is it infinite? Why does it exist at all?

No, I do not claim to know the mind of God. But I do know that people have reasons for doing things. People may reasonably disagree about those reasons, but it seems that all action is undertaken because of . . . something. That thing can range from fending off starvation to seeking shelter from something harmful to wanting something to happen. The cause could also be nothing more than a desire to be entertained, occupied, or otherwise distracted from a present circumstance.

God knows this, and so should you. When the Roman soldiers arrested Jesus in the Garden, he forgave them. When Peter cut off the ear of one of the aggressors, Jesus forgave Peter. Jesus forgives. He understood that the soldiers did what they believed they should have done, and he understood that Peter did what he felt he had to do. The Lord instructed us to turn the other cheek not out of masochism, but out of understanding. Understand the other, see things as they do. Do not retaliate. Perhaps the thing has been done out of pure cruelty, perhaps not. It is even quite possible that the person does not want forgiveness at all, believing that either he or she has done nothing wrong, or that the wrong was somehow justified. We will most likely never understand the full, true motivation of an action, but we can make an effort to do so.

God, on the other hand, does in fact know the whole story. He knows what we have been through, and he understands why we do the things we choose to do. Jesus went so far as to ask his Father to forgive people who did not even ask for it, people who "knew not what they did." Think about that! It is a hard, hard thing to do. In my own life, I am about the furthest from being persecuted as a person could be, as far as I am aware. And yet . . . I struggle with harboring ill will towards a perceived slight. I know I should not, I know people did things they felt they had to do. I know that I am largely at fault for what led to the thing, by not trying harder to either handle or escape a difficult set of circumstances.

Do I focus on mea culpa though? Or do I instead choose to look at what they could have or should have done differently? Most of the time, it's the former, but occasionally the latter creeps in. The fact is, everyone should have acted differently than we did, and it is up to me to make my peace and forgive, even though no one is asking for it. Easier said than done, this business of forgiving; Jesus is indeed an impossible act to follow.

The main takeaway, for me, is that of all the reasons to do something to another person, the fact that they first did something to you is not acceptable. Do not strike someone simply because they struck you. Do not help someone simply because they helped you. Do not hate someone, or even love someone, simply because they first hated or loved you. Hate no one, love everyone. I believe the purpose of this instruction is to instill personal responsibility for one's actions, rather than making them dependent upon the actions of another. It leads us, as does so much of what God teaches and provides, on an expansive path to empowerment and freedom. If we can actually do it, then we can break the chains of limiting, self-destructive tendencies like revenge and retaliation. It is daunting when we are down here in the weeds, rather than in Heaven with our Father. But Christ was down here with us, and his trust in God that there is more to this story than being tortured and murdered is what enabled him to live that brief earthly existence walking among us. He understood that, yes, he himself would suffer. But the gift he gave us through that suffering and ensuing forgiveness would save billions of people, which is the REAL story.

Ancient Alexandria in Egypt, "birthplace of the modern world," was the new Athens for close to a thousand years.  A place where new ideas held sway over dogmatic beliefs.  A place that America could have become, and in fact was - for about 5 minutes.  Yet once the nation was conceived and debated by brilliant men well-versed in what remained of the classics (many of which originated in Alexandria almost two thousand years before the Founding Fathers), and once its violent birth was complete with the defeat of the British, it quickly descended into just another power grab of the variety that the world has engaged in since the dawn of humanity itself.

The first few Presidents held fast to the ideal of "America," particularly George Washington.  Soon, however, the flow of new ideas, vigorously debated with intellectual fire and brilliance by classically trained citizens, slowed to a trickle, eventually mirroring the fading star of Alexandria herself when the battle of ideas turned into a battle of partisan roles, and attacks once crafted with reason and scholarship morphed into assaults on individuals, peppered with inaccuracies, allegations, and accusations that served to undermine the foe rather than his idea.  In that environment, no matter what merit the idea or proposition may possess, it is immediately relegated to obscurity at the very instant that its champion is discredited.

That is where we find ourselves today with policy decisions, be they domestic or foreign.  The ideas themselves are not debated or discussed; in fact, they are barely even understood.  Instead, the party of whomever advances the position is slandered, libeled, and otherwise disparaged by the opposing group, so that we are now no better than the state to which Alexandria had degenerated almost a thousand years after its founding by Alexander the Great, conqueror of the known world and conceiver of the world's greatest intellectual achievement, the magnificent city of Alexandria.

This is a tough one.  They are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not the same.

When something that you believe is disproved, you no longer believe it.  Simple enough.  Not so with faith; faith is "shattered" or "lost."  On the other hand, faith cannot be proved or disproved.  You have it or you don't, but it can be shown to be neither valid nor unjustified.  That is why, when testing my own beliefs and my own faith, I can find my beliefs to rest on shaky ground, while my faith remains strong.  There is a growing gulf, now a chasm, between the two for me.  CLEARLY, I cannot continue to believe what I have always told myself I believed.  But just as clearly, I know God created and set things in motion.

Did I ever believe it?  Doctrine, along with the process of indoctrination, is both a blessing and a curse.  They are employed for good and for evil.  Humans are uniquely susceptible to, and exploitable by, such forces.  They require you to say "I believe" until you reach the point that you actually do, or at least convince yourself that you do, because really, you should believe, shouldn't you?

Hopefully people can be honest enough with themselves, after enough soul-searching, to know that if they really don't believe something, then merely reciting the words does not fool God.  Creeds don't leave wiggle room; they don't allow for individuals to customize exactly what they really do feel.  Everyone needs to believe the exact same thing, because those who know best - well, they know best.  But when one doesn't even know exactly what every word means in the native tongue, how could he or she possibly know what the original words and expressions in Ancient Greek conveyed?  The Early Fathers of the Church, from Alexandria and Jerusalem and Rome and Damascus and Byzantium and Lyon, may have known exactly what they believed, but it's profoundly unlikely that their exact intentions in their varied languages have been completely passed to me in English.

So do I continue to recite the creeds, to set an example for my kids?  I may be wrong, after all, in my faltering belief in Orthodoxy.  Yes, I do continue.  And I raise them to explore, to search, to know themselves, so that one day, they will be spiritually and mentally strong enough to believe what they know and know what they believe.  And I'll leave it up to God to instill them with the faith that no creed or religion can instill, no matter how many years of ritual and devoted practice they go through.

An account from a contemporary of the writers of the four Gospels illustrates the problem of accepting the testimony of others as "revelatory" to you personally, as we Christians do with the Bible.  This problem was addressed in a post last week.

Tacitus was a Roman historian who was born roughly 20 years after Christ was crucified, and died roughly 80 years after the crucifixion.  During that span, scholars believe the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were composed.  Tacitus even mentions Christ being crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate in Judea in one of his books.

Tacitus also recounts the life of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, who, sometime before 70 A.D., traveled to Alexandria, Egypt.  While in Alexandria, he was approached, and we'll let the words of Cornelius Tacitus in one of his great works entitled The Histories pick up the story there:

"In the course of the months which Vespasian spent at Alexandria, waiting for the regular season of summer winds when the sea could be relied upon, (1) many miracles occurred. These seemed to be indications that Vespasian enjoyed heaven's blessing and that the gods showed a certain leaning towards him. Among the lower classes at Alexandria was a blind man whom everybody knew as such. One day this fellow threw himself at Vespasian's feet, imploring him with groans to heal his blindness. He had been told to make this request by Serapis, the favourite god of a nation much addicted to strange beliefs. He asked that it might please the emperor to anoint his cheeks and eyeballs with the water of his mouth. A second petitioner, who suffered from a withered hand, pleaded his case too, also on the advice of Serapis: would Caesar tread upon him with the imperial foot? At first Vespasian laughed at them and refused. When the two insisted, he hesitated. At one moment he was alarmed by the thought that he would be accused of vanity if he failed. At the next, the urgent appeals of the two victims and the flatteries of his entourage made him sanguine of success. Finally he asked the doctors for an opinion whether blindness and atrophy of this sort were curable by human means. The doctors were eloquent on the various possibilities. The blind man's vision was not completely destroyed, and if certain impediments were removed his sight would return. The other victim's limb had been dislocated, but could be put right by correct treatment. Perhaps this was the will of the gods, they added; perhaps the emperor had been chosen to perform a miracle. Anyhow, if a cure were effected, the credit would go to the ruler; if it failed, the poor wretches would have to bear the ridicule. So Vespasian felt that his destiny gave him the key to every door and that nothing now defied belief. With a smiling expression and surrounded by an expectant crowd of bystanders, he did what was asked. Instantly the cripple recovered the use of his hand and the light of day dawned again upon his blind companion. Both these incidents are still vouched for by eye-witnesses, though there is now nothing to be gained by lying."

Two things:  first, should I believe this account, the exact same account given by some of Christ's followers about similar healing powers, because I am told that "these incidents are still vouched for by eye-witnesses" and that "there is now nothing to be gained by lying?"  And secondly, should the fact that there is ALSO a pagan account of this miracle attributed to a different a healer, a different God, in a different land, necessarily negate, or even lessen, the chance that Christ did in fact perform a similar miracle?

The answers to both questions, for me, is no.  I don't believe that the spit of a Roman Emperor cured a blind man and a crippled man.  And I don't believe that the recounting of Vespasian's miracle should dictate what I do or do not believe about God.  They are mutually exclusive.  Too many scholars make the argument that, because similar stories exist in the pagan world, accounts of the followers of Jesus must necessarily be rejected.  Christians will say, "hey, they stole that story from the word of mouth going around from early Christians," while non-Christians will say "hey, Christians assimilated pagan beliefs and stories into their own mythology."  Maybe the Gospel accounts happened as recounted, maybe they didn't, but it cannot be established definitively either way.  So it is left to what we "believe," and hopefully "know," somewhere in the cores of our being, in our hearts, regardless of the persuasiveness of written words presented to us as "revelations" which "are still vouched for by eye-witnesses."

A thing happened, or it didn't.  It was experienced, or it was not.  We know it, or we merely believe it.

Regardless of the occurrence or fact and whether or not it actually transpired, however, the story does not end there.  The "story," in fact, can only now begin.  And that is the difference between the two truths that we search for.  One truth is an account of something that has happened, is now happening, or may in the future happen.  It is only as true as the recollection, or the imagination, of the one telling the story.

The other truth is Truth with a capital "T" and does not depend on a storyteller.  It is, or it isn't.  And it is very specific.  When the number 3 is pushed on my calculator, then the + key is pushed, then the number 3 is pushed again, then the = key is pushed, the display will have a 6 on it.  That is a Truth.  But me telling my friend that I pushed a 3 then a + then a 3 then an = and then saw a 6 on the screen is the truth [small "t"] as recounted by me to the friend.  Did it actually happen?  There's no way to know.  Was it likely to have happened, if in fact I pressed the keys that I said I pushed?  Or, less certainly, could it conceivably have happened the way I said it did, even though it may not have been likely?

Questions such as these are important.  They illustrate not only what we know, but also what we can know.  Then, that "knowledge" can be compared to a "belief."  But the belief does not require the knowledge in order for it to be held as a belief; nor does the knowledge require a belief in order that it be true.  They are mutually independent of each other.  Knowledge and belief can reinforce each other, but do not depend upon one another.

This will sound strange to those who know me or my writing, because it will sound like I'm questioning my faith.  I am not.  What I am questioning is something else, though I'm not sure what.  I suppose I'm questioning the truth of the Truth, or the story that has been handed down as the explanation for it all:  I am saying that I cannot accept that what the Bible says is all true.  In fact, I cannot accept that any specific part of it is true, although the Truth has somehow inspired men to attempt to convey orally and in writing the sentiments that they had intensely experienced so that others may come to know what they knew through direct revelation.  I cannot accept that God said "Thou shalt not kill" to Moses, because I cannot accept that God spoke or wrote in English or any other spoken or written language developed by man.  I CAN accept that it was conveyed directly to us, somehow, that killing other people is wrong.  That it was conveyed to each of us directly in a way that transcends spoken or written language; in a way that we simply "know," in a way that is revealed to us as the Truth.  That is the definition of a revelation in the spiritual sense.  Accepting the word of another person, however, is not a revelation; that is merely trust in the other person.  Thomas Paine clarifies what I'm trying to convey in the early chapters of The Rights of Man.

Is it possible to have faith while questioning the human sources which corroborate that faith?  It is if it has been instilled in us directly, which should be the only way that it can be instilled.  Why would God do it any other way?  Why would God have our eternal salvation be left to individuals choosing whether or not to believe the stories of people who lived thousands of years ago that were subsequently handed down and translated into other human languages that didn't have the same meanings and sentiments as the language of the first person to record the story?  I don't believe He would do that.  I believe He would instill faith in our hearts through direct, unspoken, unwritten revelation, and leave our beliefs or non-beliefs in Biblical accounts out of the equation.  Either we have faith, or we don't.  It's not evidence-based, and it shouldn't be determined by whether or not I believe the infinitely mangled accounts of what did or did not happen, nor by how or when or to whom they happened.  If I need to know something, He will see to it that I know it.

And that's the Truth.

"Do, or do not.
There is no try."
    - Yoda

Establishing Christianity throughout the Empire, then the world.  Ending slavery in America.  So many deaths and years in the pursuits of these objectives before they were eventually accomplished.  What would the Jedi Master have ruled?  Didn't they merely "try," rather than "do?"  And consequently, wouldn't he have been disappointed and unimpressed?  No, and no.  Doing, as opposed to trying, is committing to something completely, with the mindset of "failure is not an option."  Doing is more than taking a shot, seeing what happens, keeping your fingers crossed; it is taking the field knowing that victory is assured, even if your own death occurs before that ultimate victory is realized.  It is saying that this thing is larger than I am; I am doing my part in the pursuit of the larger goal.
Lincoln and freedom DID win, even though people did die; Jesus won, though countless martyrs perished and continue to perish along with Him.  These people did, they did not try.
Searching for and finding Truth, regardless of belief, is something that I believe all people are here to do.  Helping people do this is very important to me, though I haven't made much progress.  When I die, if there is still great hostility and war based on religious as well as non-religious beliefs (I'll grudgingly concede that possibility...), will God look at my life as a failure?  Will He say, "Tom, you tried but did not"?  Or will He say "you did"?  I'm doing and will continue to do the things in this life that will hopefully leave Him no choice other than the acknowledgment of my doing, starting with myself and sharing as much as I can with others.  Even if it's still not completely done.

Schools don't teach some of the most important things.  Maybe there's not enough time in the school day, but to that I would say "make the school day longer."  Specifically, I'm talking about the Latin and Greek foundations of Western civilization.  Why don't we have the grand, humanity-altering ideas that we used to?  Well, we do, actually; it's just that the people who have them aren't in position to realize their enactments.
Roman youths were well-schooled not only in Latin, but also in Greek grammar and culture.  Hellenistic culture was the basis of much of what became Rome as we know it.  These Greek and Latin foundations were lost during the "Dark Ages" (hence, the Dark Ages) after barbarians burned every church and public building they could find, which is where almost all of these documents were housed, but a few surviving stores of manuscripts were gradually rediscovered and translated by Islamic scholars into their Arabic language.  During that period, the world saw a "flowering of Middle Eastern culture" - which was actually a rebirth of classical Greek and Roman knowledge and philosophy.  Once this spread from the intellectual and cultural centers of Islam to Europe, largely through the Muslim conquest of Spain, Europe quickly awoke from its dark period and the rest, as they say, is history.  The Dar al-Islam ("House of Islam," i.e. the Islamic world) subsequently fell back away from its classical flowering and into its own focus and reliance on the words of the Koran and its earliest commentaries known as the Hadith; with that culture too, it can also be said that the rest is history.
By the time of the British Empire and the New World, all well-heeled young boys were infused with sound classical educations.  The political and social ideas of Greece and Rome were tossed and turned and debated and even experimented with, culminating in the largest-scale experiment of all, America.  And over 230 years later, the experiment is still working.  It's working more effectively than any government and society in the history of humanity, and no wonder:  the inventors of this system had centuries worth of foundation to develop from, without having to reinvent any wheels or go through trial and error.  There was, and is, nothing new under the sun.
How many children do you know that are being exposed to any sort of education in the classics?  5?  1?  0?  If they're in public elementary schools in America, the number is probably pretty close to 0.  Don't leave it to the schools; take it upon yourself.  Almost any sentence you use will have at least one word with a Greek or Latin root.  Take a second to point these out to your kids whenever you think of it.  Last night while washing dishes, my 7-year old 2nd grader asked my wife which definition was for "homonym" and which was for "homophone."  My wife wasn't 100% sure, so I went through the Latin root thing with my son:  "homo" means "same," "nym" means "name," "phone" means "sound," like you hear people on the phone.  So which definition goes with homonym, and which with homophone?  He immediately got it, then hit me with a followup out of the vast, well-lit recesses of his brain:  "dad, what does 'sapien' mean?"
Which led to a whole new, extremely short conversation, since I had no idea what "sapien" meant - but can you imagine where we might be if we all spent time on the classics?  It's the foundation of all of our political idealogy, all of our scientific and legal nomenclature, all of our daily spoken and written vocabulary, the very ability to express through words the highly nuanced thoughts and feelings that we are experiencing on a constant basis.  Not to mention the history lessons that we wouldn't have to continually learn by doing, rather than by reading about.  As Thomas F. Madden convincingly details in his book Empires of Trust, the Romans solved the vexing problem of religious terrorism in the Middle East almost 2,000 years ago; who among us, or among the world's political leaders, learned and knows what that solution was?  Thomas Madden does, I do, everyone who read his book does, as does everyone who's had a solid education in the classics.  Those are lessons worth learning about in text books, rather than figuring them out on the battlefield and in crowded cities.

On May 9, in the Arab country of Jordan, Pope Benedict XVI delivered the following remarks.
His papacy has been formed by his deeply held conviction in the power of faith, reason, and truth, each serving to strengthen the other.  This speech illustrates the rationale behind those beliefs perfectly.

Text of Pope Benedict XVI's Speech to Muslim Leaders, Diplomatic Corps and the Rectors of Jordan's Universities

Your Royal Highness,
Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a source of great joy for me to meet with you this morning in this magnificent setting. I wish to thank Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammed Bin Talal for his kind words of welcome. Your Royal Highness’s numerous initiatives to promote inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue and exchanges are appreciated by the people of the Hashemite Kingdom and they are widely respected by the international community. I know that these efforts receive the active support of other members of the Royal Family as well as the nation’s government, and find ample resonance in the many initiatives of collaboration among Jordanians. For all this, I wish to express my own heartfelt admiration.
Places of worship, like this splendid Al-Hussein Bin Talal mosque named after the revered late King, stand out like jewels across the earth’s surface. From the ancient to the modern, the magnificent to the humble, they all point to the divine, to the Transcendent One, to the Almighty. And through the centuries these sanctuaries have drawn men and women into their sacred space to pause, to pray, to acknowledge the presence of the Almighty, and to recognize that we are all his creatures.
For this reason we cannot fail to be concerned that today, with increasing insistency, some maintain that religion fails in its claim to be, by nature, a builder of unity and harmony, an expression of communion between persons and with God. Indeed some assert that religion is necessarily a cause of division in our world; and so they argue that the less attention given to religion in the public sphere the better. Certainly, the contradiction of tensions and divisions between the followers of different religious traditions, sadly, cannot be denied. However, is it not also the case that often it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society? In the face of this situation, where the opponents of religion seek not simply to silence its voice but to replace it with their own, the need for believers to be true to their principles and beliefs is felt all the more keenly. Muslims and Christians, precisely because of the burden of our common history so often marked by misunderstanding, must today strive to be known and recognized as worshippers of God faithful to prayer, eager to uphold and live by the Almighty’s decrees, merciful and compassionate, consistent in bearing witness to all that is true and good, and ever mindful of the common origin and dignity of all human persons, who remain at the apex of God’s creative design for the world and for history.
The resolve of Jordanian educators and religious and civic leaders to ensure that the public face of religion reflects its true nature is praiseworthy. The example of individuals and communities, together with the provision of courses and programmes, manifest the constructive contribution of religion to the educational, cultural, social and other charitable sectors of your civic society. Some of this spirit I have been able to sample at first hand. Yesterday, I experienced the renowned educational and rehabilitation work of the Our Lady of Peace Centre where Christians and Muslims are transforming the lives of entire families, by assisting them to ensure that their disabled children take up their rightful place in society. Earlier this morning, I blessed the foundation stone of Madaba University where young Muslim and Christian adults will side by side receive the benefits of a tertiary education, enabling them to contribute justly to the social and economic development of their nation. Of great merit too are the numerous initiatives of inter-religious dialogue supported by the Royal Family and the diplomatic community and sometimes undertaken in conjunction with the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue. These include the ongoing work of the Royal Institutes for Inter-faith studies and for Islamic Thought, the Amman Message of 2004, the Amman Interfaith Message of 2005, and the more recent Common Word letter which echoed a theme consonant with my first encyclical: the unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbour, and the fundamental contradiction of resorting to violence or exclusion in the name of God (cf. Deus Caritas Est, 16).
Such initiatives clearly lead to greater reciprocal knowledge, and they foster a growing respect both for what we hold in common and for what we understand differently. Thus, they should prompt Christians and Muslims to probe even more deeply the essential relationship between God and his world so that together we may strive to ensure that society resonates in harmony with the divine order. In this regard, the co-operation found here in Jordan sets an encouraging and persuasive example for the region, and indeed the world, of the positive, creative contribution which religion can and must make to civic society.
Distinguished friends, today I wish to refer to a task which I have addressed on a number of occasions and which I firmly believe Christians and Muslims can embrace, particularly through our respective contributions to learning and scholarship, and public service. That task is the challenge to cultivate for the good, in the context of faith and truth, the vast potential of human reason. Christians in fact describe God, among other ways, as creative Reason, which orders and guides the world. And God endows us with the capacity to participate in his reason and thus to act in accordance with what is good. Muslims worship God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, who has spoken to humanity. And as believers in the one God we know that human reason is itself God’s gift and that it soars to its highest plane when suffused with the light of God’s truth. In fact, when human reason humbly allows itself to be purified by faith, it is far from weakened; rather, it is strengthened to resist presumption and to reach beyond its own limitations. In this way, human reason is emboldened to pursue its noble purpose of serving mankind, giving expression to our deepest common aspirations and extending, rather than manipulating or confining, public debate. Thus, genuine adherence to religion – far from narrowing our minds – widens the horizon of human understanding. It protects civil society from the excesses of the unbridled ego which tend to absolutize the finite and eclipse the infinite; it ensures that freedom is exercised hand in hand with truth, and it adorns culture with insights concerning all that is true, good and beautiful.
This understanding of reason, which continually draws the human mind beyond itself in the quest for the Absolute, poses a challenge; it contains a sense of both hope and caution. Together, Christians and Muslims are impelled to seek all that is just and right. We are bound to step beyond our particular interests and to encourage others, civil servants and leaders in particular, to do likewise in order to embrace the profound satisfaction of serving the common good, even at personal cost. And we are reminded that because it is our common human dignity which gives rise to universal human rights, they hold equally for every man and woman, irrespective of his or her religious, social or ethnic group. In this regard, we must note that the right of religious freedom extends beyond the question of worship and includes the right – especially of minorities – to fair access to the employment market and other spheres of civic life.
Before I leave you this morning I would like to acknowledge in a special way the presence among us of His Beatitude Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Baghdad, whom I greet most warmly. His presence brings to mind the people of neighbouring Iraq many of whom have found welcome refuge here in Jordan. The international community’s efforts to promote peace and reconciliation, together with those of the local leaders, must continue in order to bear fruit in the lives of Iraqis. I wish to express my appreciation for all those who are assisting in the endeavors to deepen trust and to rebuild the institutions and infrastructure essential to the well-being of that society. And once again, I urge diplomats and the international community they represent together with local political and religious leaders to do everything possible to ensure the ancient Christian community of that noble land its fundamental right to peaceful coexistence with their fellow citizens.
Distinguished friends, I trust that the sentiments I have expressed today will leave us with renewed hope for the future. Our love and duty before the Almighty is expressed not only in our worship but also in our love and concern for children and young people – your families – and for all Jordanians. It is for them that you labor and it is they who motivate you to place the good of every human person at the heart of institutions, laws and the workings of society. May reason, ennobled and humbled by the grandeur of God’s truth, continue to shape the life and institutions of this nation, in order that families may flourish and that all may live in peace, contributing to and drawing upon the culture that unifies this great Kingdom!

A prediction was made on Tax Day, April 15 of this year, by myself to some co-workers on the walk back from lunch, along the lines of "ya know, we're overdue for an earthquake or something, aren't we?  Probably somewhere in Asia; it's been too long since a natural disaster like that, and they always seem to kill 10 or 20,000 people somewhere in Asia."  April 17, an earthquake struck Afghanistan, but thankfully only a handful of people lost their lives (these Asian disasters tend to register loss of life in the thousands or tens of thousands, rather than merely the tens).
To me, we weren't out of the woods yet with that earthquake.  I tend to look at massive loss of life in natural disasters as God's or nature's way of "thinning the herd."  If the human population were to grow unchecked by tsunami, earthquake, flood, or disease, then the only regularly-occurring calamitous loss of life event left would be war, and wars just don't take very many lives these days.  Hundreds of thousands, even millions, used to die every generation or two in armed conflict, but that doesn't happen anymore.
Which leads us to last week's swine flu scare.  After dodging the Asian earthquake bullet and then seeing the first obscure headlines about a few people dying of an unknown flu virus in Mexico, it seemed fairly apparent that this was a pandemic unfolding exactly as the experts have been predicting for decades now, which is to say, a previously unknown killer quietly coming out of nowhere and making its deadly way through one of the largest cities on earth before anyone even knew about it.  The only thing that has saved us thus far is that it just happened to not possess a very deadly genetic makeup.  Of course, that could change with a mutation here or there, but the scientists tell us it does not appear likely to do so.
We may have dodged another bullet, but if you paid attention in any history class you ever took, you realize that vast, unforeseen loss of human life all at once is the rule, not the exception.  Why do I bring up these awful thoughts?  Here's why:  if you truly understand, if you honestly believe, that it's a question of when and not if, then you would probably live your life differently than you do.  Different choices would be made, and for different reasons.  Maybe you could find some more joy in avoiding conflict and in smoothing things over and in helping anyone you're able to help, rather than trying always to best others at any cost.  Perhaps you could try harder to make your corner of the world better, not worse.  I don't know.  The other night after my late-night Wal-Mart grocery trip, I went up to my car to unload my groceries into the trunk.  A lady came up to me, and I saw her coming a mile away, hoping she wouldn't ask for "help," because I know I almost never give parking lot wanderers any money and always feel guilty, greedy, bad.  But she did, and for some reason I pulled out my wallet to give her a dollar (I had no change in my pocket).  All I had were 20's.  And for some reason, I gave her a 20.  She was very thankful, blessed me, and wandered off while I unloaded my groceries.  When I drove out of the parking lot I saw her hitting up someone else unloading theirs.
There's not a moral to the story, a lesson to be learned, a life that was somehow changed for the better or worse because of a good or stupid deed.  It's just life.  Life should be about helping people you're able to help, even if they're not family, even if you don't know them at all.  I do know that as hard as I try, I still find myself feeling like a complete ass way too often while thinking about arguing with someone or being selfish or less helpful than I could should have been, so there's infinite room for improvement for me.  How about you?