There is a line from Tim Allen's Christmas movie about Santa Claus where he says" I see it, but I don't believe it." The little elf girl then tells him " Adults have it wrong. Seeing is not believing, believing is seeing."
I want to start out by saying that I am not, in any stretch of the imagination, a scholar, an intellectual, or even particularly smart. I have no advanced degrees, and it has been years since I have done serious studies. It is a good thing, then, that studies of spiritual things, and spiritual awareness do not require anyone to be of any certain academic level.If that were so, then I am afraid most of the world would simply be out of luck.
We only have to turn to the New Testament to see that the disciples of Jesus were ordinary men. I think that they were chosen for that very reason, plus, the most important thing of all, they believed. OK, in all fairness, some were skeptical at first, and some believed right away. Some needed to see more to believe, and some needed only the words of Jesus to believe. So, the question of the day is based on the chicken and egg riddle.
Which comes first, believing or seeing?
For me, it has been a life long journey, and in a later blog, I will share my history of my own spiritual path, including my early church days, my theology studies in college, and then my branching out of thought and practice. But suffice to say for now, that I am still learning, changing, and hopefully growing on my journey.
Anyway, I got off track. My faith has been built on trial and error, and life experience. Perhaps if I were to just have more pure faith, I would not struggle as much. But, well, that is just me being me.
One of my theology textbooks in college has this inscription in on the inside page
. "Knowledge without experience must always remain in the realm of doubt."
More later, but how is your faith or belief established, is it seeing is believing, or is it believing is seeing?
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I had always thought that there was some type of Divine order to this chaos. I always wanted to believe that everything happened for a purpo...
1 comment:
Cedar: Hmm. Good question. Perhaps believing is inherent in each person and all a person has to do is acknowledge its presence rather than arguing with oneself that it isn't there? Once acknowledged belief grows through a domino theory based upon daily events and interactions. On the other hand its quintessential presence may not grow, or after starting to grow become stifled, depending upon one's inherent ability to come up with arguments that it isn't present based upon daily events and interactions. Whew...where is the beer?
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