My Dad loved sharing his faith with his kids even if we weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always that receptive. One evening he decided to teach my sister and me the definition of faith. It had gotten dark outside so the lights were on inside the house.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Look around\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What do you see?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The living room, the hallway, the front door\u00e2\u20ac\u009d my sister replied.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chairs, the coffee table\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I added.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153And where are we?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dad asked.<\/p>\n
My sister and I were puzzled. It was obvious where we were.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153On the couch, in the living room.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153How do you know?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We can see the room.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, I said.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153And the couch is holding us up.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Dad reached over and turned out the lights. It was impossible to see anything for several moments. He had intentionally had the lights on the brightest setting.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Where are we now?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Still in the living room.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153How do you know?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Because we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t moved.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153And I can still feel the couch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153How do you know it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the same couch and not a different one?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Huh?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make any sense, Dad. We haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t moved. So, of course, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still on the couch in the living room.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But, how do you know?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n
We were both getting a little tired of the game at this point. It was like he was asking us why green is green. It just was, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nothing has changed. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still exactly where we were a minute ago.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
I said this thinking Dad was missing the completely obvious or that he was teasing us somehow.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not true. A minute ago, you said you knew where you were because you could see it. But you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see it anymore. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dark. So something has changed. How do you know that everything didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get moved around? Or that the living room is still around us?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Hmmmm\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 We didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u0153know\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for sure. We couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t because we had no way to test our assumption that everything was the same. Assumption — though at seven and six, we may not have known the word, we certainly knew what it meant conceptually. We assumed things all the time. We assumed the sun would rise and set, that trees would grow leaves then lose them, that water would come out of the faucet when we turned the handle, that each leg would hold our weight when we put a foot out to take a step. We assumed as we fell asleep that we would wake up in the morning, that the sidewalks and streets would always take us to the same places, that rain would not melt us because we were not wicked witches. We assumed that Dad loved us and would make sure we had everything we needed and at least a few of the things we wanted (though we often got the two confused).<\/p>\n
Belief is an idea, a conceptual framework, a theory, about how a thing works.<\/p>\n
Assumption is belief shaped by experience.<\/p>\n
Faith is belief shaped by hope.<\/p>\n
Our parents impart their beliefs to us. From their perspective, they are assumptions and articles of faith that have stood the test of time. From our perspective, until they are tested, those beliefs remain firmly in the realm of faith, based solely on trust, which is a form of hope.<\/p>\n
My Dad did not consciously spell this out in such detail to us \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we were young children after all. And I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that he would have put it quite this way in any case. But the object lesson my Dad was teaching us that night has stayed with me and from it I have refined my own assumptions about the subtleties of belief, assumption, and faith.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dad?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can we turn the lights back on?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want to make sure everything is still there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it be?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you scared?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153A little.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see anything.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But nothing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s changed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153How do you know for sure?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You tell me. You told me just a minute ago that nothing had changed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I was becoming distinctly uncomfortable. I always did hate the dark.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not so sure. Can we turn the lights on?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153OK\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The lights snapped back on. Now I was blinded because my eyes had just started adjusting to the dark. But I felt much better.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153When you go to sit on a chair, do you ever wonder whether it will hold you up?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. I could tell by the tone of his voice that Dad was getting to the heart of the matter, though the question still didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make much sense.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153No.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why not?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure I must have let out an exasperated sigh at this point.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Because whenever I have sat in a chair it has always held me up.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But it could break. It could fall apart and you could land on the floor.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true, I thought. Things did break. So why did I trust the chair? Oh, man! This wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t good. If I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust a chair to hold me up… I mean\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 my Dad really had a point. Now I was back to being uncomfortable. In fact, the couch might have creaked a little. What if it\u00e2\u20ac\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You expect the chair to hold you up because it always has. You believe it will hold you up. You have faith in the chair. In your experience, chairs do not let you down. You can count on them to do what chairs are designed to do, which is to hold you up. It is the same with God or with me.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You trust me to go to work so that we can eat and live in this house. You have faith in me.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You trust God to keep the world spinning and the sun shining. You have faith in God.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Bible says \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfaith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see God. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see my love for you. But you can see the evidence of my love for you because you have food to eat and a place to live. You see evidence of God because the sun comes up everyday and the world keeps spinning.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what faith is. You believe in my love and you believe in God not because you can see them directly but because you see the evidence.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
My father thought that he was teaching me about faith. But the lesson was far more powerful than he realized. While it did indeed help me to understand the concept of faith, it also planted the seeds of doubt, though it would take many years for those seeds to take root. I learned to question my assumptions and not to take anything at face value. I also learned that all I know for sure is that I exist somehow — I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually know if anybody or anything else really exists. When I saw the movie \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Matrix\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, I thought it summed up the fundamental fact of existence: perception is the only reality we know.<\/p>\n
At the time, though, my Dad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lesson had the intended effect. Over the next few years I began to earnestly seek a connection with God. By the age of nine, God, in the person of Jesus Christ, had become an incontrovertible fact in my life. He was at the center of my identity until I was well into my thirties. My assumptions about how the world worked and about eternity were rooted in the hopes I had inherited from my Dad, had made my own, and then passed on to my family.<\/p>\n
Hopes that justice would prevail, that bad people would eventually be punished and that good people would eventually be rewarded; that death was not permanent after all and that, after this life was over, God would explain it all to us so that all mysteries would be revealed; that in this life, God would protect us from evil and sickness and danger if we just stayed in the center of his will.<\/p>\n
Experience is constantly reshaping hope. The things I hoped for in my youth have given way to much more complex hopes. Being a father caused me to challenge my own beliefs that the Judeo\/Christian God of the Bible could be any kind of model of fatherhood. The faith of my childhood has faded into more of a sense (belief is too strong a word) that there is a kind of connectedness that ties us all together and, perhaps, gives us a measure of permanence.<\/p>\n
It is still hard for me to behold such wonders as DNA and imagine that it is a totally random accident. But if there is a designer, I no longer believe that such a being is in total control of everything that happens. There is a brutality to life and existence in general that is hard to ascribe to a kind, all-knowing, all-powerful wizard that lives in a jeweled city in the sky. The violence with which galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets and life on those planets come into existence creates its own chaos and introduces an element of randomness that makes it reasonable to question whether, at any given point in time, anybody is truly in control of anything, or whether the chair in which I am about to sit, will hold me up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My father thought that he was teaching me about faith. But the lesson was far more powerful than he realized. While it did indeed help me to understand the concept of faith, it also planted the seeds of doubt, though it would take many years for those seeds to take root.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fiveminuteorator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fiveminuteorator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fiveminuteorator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fiveminuteorator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fiveminuteorator.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fiveminuteorator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fiveminuteorator.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fiveminuteorator.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fiveminuteorator.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}