by Jayden Harlow

Created on: January 16, 2009   Last Updated: January 17, 2009

I find it very interesting that this article topic should come to my attention this week, at a time when I've been spending so much time reflecting on what it means to have faith. It seems to me, as I look at the world, that faith has been supplanted somehow by absolute conviction: a presumed direct knowledge of the intentions of a higher power. The concept of doubt as a necessary part of spirituality has been purged in favor of the idea that it's possible for us as humans to know with such certainty what is spiritually right that some feel justified in attempting to force others into a moral code taken from a book written across centuries in many hands and translated from different languages - often based on copies of copies of copies.

Beyond the writing process that produced the books of the Bible, different minds have determined which writings should be included in the ultimate draft: incorporating some and excluding others. And all it would take to throw the divine authorship of this book into question would be the acceptance that somewhere, sometime, someone involved in these many different drafts of this one book, across thousands of years, sincerely thought he or she was being guided by a divine hand and was wrong. Or even if no one in the process was misguided, could it be considered that a single line of the book was written for the audience of the day and not intended to be followed as written forever after - like an 18th century father who tells his child that it's wrong to fly to the moon in order to stop the child from trying to jump off the roof of the barn every other day? That father may never have intended to say that journeys to the moon would never be possible or just - only that the attempt at the time would be harmful.

I prefer Paul Tillich's analysis when he said that "faith would cease to be faith without separation - the opposite element. He who has faith is separated from the object of his faith. Otherwise he would possess it. It would be a matter of immediate certainty and not of faith." Yet many act as though they possess "the way" because it is all written in its entirety in the Bible. But if we believe that all direction for how life should be interpreted and lived exists in print, within our reach, can we really say that we have faith? I don't think so. To me, that's akin to saying that I have an unerring sense of direction simply because I never venture beyond the streets outlined on a map I have purchased. It's fabricating faith

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