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One of my Oregon friends lost his wife last Sunday. She was 26. She was kind and beautiful, and forever smiling. I knew her as a river guide, able to coolly direct a raft of 12-year-olds through brutal rapids in the morning and offer a tender hug when they got homesick in the middle of the night. I’m a grouch if my campers wake me up; I could have learned a lot from her.
I imagine people generally grapple with the same questions when death wrests a loved one from their grasp. For me, unable to conceive why such a wonderful person should be taken so young, I faced a choice. I could question God’s existence. I could question his benevolence. Or, accepting that God doesn’t take into account whether or not I will understand him when he does what he does, I could trust that he is, as the Bible says, good.
Realizing that none of the options would give me the answers I needed, and that one would let me keep the only parts of me I’ve ever liked, I picked door number three.
Faith sometimes seems profane to some people. Extremism is terrifying, sure, and fundamentalism, if it misses the point, is insane. But when did faith become something bad? And why?
Logic and reason rule academia. All truth must have proof, therefore God is irrational. Besides, we have beauty without him, dignity without deities. Faith is not welcome here.
But don’t we need both? Immanuel Kant said faith without reason is blind, but reason without faith is empty. Have we so quickly forgotten?
Was it rationale that guided 50 men to sign a treasonous document on a hot July day in 1776, knowing torture and death was their fate should their new country fall to the larger, more sophisticated British army? Did logic convince William Wilberforce and the abolitionist movement to battle the institution of slavery in the face of unimaginable hatred and violence in the 19th century? Could scientific data have led the American suffragists to fight millennia of tradition and a nation of derisive men in their quest for equality?
Without faith, these brave people would have had nothing to stand on. Reason would have laughed in their faces or told them to give it up when the odds were against them. Fortunately, they ignored common sense and followed something bigger.
Some who decry faith say science has found no proof of God. I say, what proof are you looking for? A copyright etched into the underside of Mars? A “GOD WUZ HERE” scrawled in stars across the Andromeda Galaxy?
Love, beauty, laughter, my existence and the small amount of good I’ve seen come from it – this is enough evidence for me. My faith can handle the rest.
I’m not advocating to reject reason, only that faith is a necessary and beneficial part of life. Religions typically do little but lock us in cages. But faith, founded on truth, sets us free. Real faith leads to the pursuit of justice, truth, kindness and equality. Faith brings hope; reason can kill hope. And faith, when properly understood, could never be a bad thing.
Tyler Francke is also partial to pie.
Bangor Daily News