Snailbites

Truth

May 7, 2008 – 7:29 am

Sitting in Church on Ascension Thursday, a tiny little part of the Gospel reading struck me profoundly. Matthew 28:17 reads:

“When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.”

I couldn’t help but relate that back to our community.  Every meeting, assembly, household, we come into worship to see Him, to seek His face.  And if all goes as it should, then by His grace, God reveals Himself to us.  And yet we doubt so many things.

Imagine the position of the Disciples upon seeing Jesus.  They actually see Him, in flesh and blood.  The Messiah is once again walking on this Earth.  And yet, even still, they doubt!  ”Is it really Him?” “How is it possible?” they must have said to each other.

As if Christ does not have that kind of power.  As if he were just spitting rhetoric when he promised to destroy the Temple and rebuild in 3 days.  As if the Kingdom that He promised to build here could be conquered by death.

And to be totally honest with you, dear Biters, I don’t blame them one bit.  Because it is in our human nature to doubt.

I am a man of science, of reason and proofs, of algorithms and mathematics.  In most circumstances, this is my approach to life - by proof and number.  If I don’t see it for my own eyes, I won’t believe it.  However, over the past few years though, I’ve grown immensely in my faith.  And one profound thing that we must learn in our approach to religion, is that you can’t always believe in what you see.  

A part of our inherent biological makeup is shrouded in mystery.  Where did we come from?  How were we created?  The whole origin of Science itself is based on a theory that cannot be absolutely proven.  We can’t explain everything.  If we had answers to all the questions, then what would be the point of life?  As human beings, we need to believe in things that we can’t possibly explain.  

And for myself, someone who’s always trying to explain everything and reason things out… I’m beginning to learn that answers come from revelation.  Most of this stuff I will never figure out.  In fact, if people who are infinitely smarter than me can label something “a mystery”, what makes me think that I will have a solution?

Reason is important, yes.  Numbers are important, yes.  But faith is equally as important, and to a man of reason like myself, perhaps even more important.  So let us worship with questions, with reason, but without doubt.  God is moving mountains. God will eradicate poverty everywhere, of every kind.  And God is renewing CFC.

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves”  FIDES ET RATIO, Pope John Paul II