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.
Posted by: |