Some thoughts on faith
Last night’s episode of House was truly outstanding.
For those of you who didn’t see it, House is assigned to a very interesting patient. This young man is a fifteen year old faith healer who claims to have special revelation from God. Through the course of the episode, House and his friend Dr. Wilson struggle through issues of faith and science, and the show actually concludes with a very intriguing statement from Dr. Wilson: “Just because you believe in something doesn’t mean you will always live up to it.”
Since the Enlightenment, the concept of faith has been drastically redefined. Faith is now seen as anti-science, a bizarre leap that defies natural explanation. According to this line of thinking, faith does not seek to explain itself, consumed iwth the necessity of leaving empty gaps in reality so that “mystery” may abound. “God just wants us to trust Him…”
Since the Scopes trials, the world has bought this line of reasoning: science says one thing, and “faith” denies it. Christians have bought into it: “I don’t care what science or philosophy says, I have faith.” Meanwhile, thinking individuals are forced to make a choice between religion and verfiable fact.
When you walk into a room, you flip the light switch. Why? You have walked into thousands of rooms, and flipped thousands of light switches-maybe not thousands, probalby hundreds–and you have found that most every time you flip that switch, the room is illuminated. In other words, you have found light switches to be generally “faithful”. In my view, this is what faith should be, placing trust in something we find trustworthy.
Some of you are familiar with the struggles that I faced in college in deciding what my system of belief should be. By my junior year I was very close to becoming an agnostic. I wanted to believe the truth, and I put my “faith” to the test philosophically. I found that Christianity was not lacking answers to significant questions, and it provided me with the best answers to questions that plagued me. I tested God, and found him to be faithful, and so I place my faith in him.
At a poker game with his “friends”, House states that the universe can be understood completely given enough time. I agree; if we had an infinite amount of time and sin didn’t exist, we could understand the universe. Check out The Privileged Planet for more evidence of this. The universe is actually remarkably simple. House thinks that his argument weakens the concept of faith, but by my definition, he actually defends faith. Faith should be put to the test.
I feel that this has been a very willy-nilly post, and I don’t know how clearly I’ve written it. For more discussio on this issue take a look at Dale’s article “Childlike Faith”.
