Hi there,
my coming to christianity in the last 11 years has been a pretty rocky road. At about the same time when I left my atheistic shell I got schizophrenia, and many times I did not know if religious faith is perhaps something delusional. So I have backslidden very often ... I kept a certain reverence for spiritual things but found it safer to keep a distance. Actually this had been pretty successful as far as my own subjective life was concerned. It seemed to me that when I cut out God I was happier and life was easier. But something kept nagging me, I was asking myself am I denying the truth? Isn't God my Father and shouldn't I believe in Him even when it wasn't so easy? I didn't give up the faith entirely and returned to attempting to lead a spiritual life again and again. At some point I got pretty sure that God exists and that He wanted me to put my faith in Him and to go on His ways. I got convicted about my sins and that if I wanted a future beyond death I needed to turn to God and to be obedient to Him.
But I have deep problems with my mind, because of the schizophrenia. When I engage in something religious, it is usually a struggle for me because while my spirit is willing, my flesh strives against my spirit, and since my mind isn't working so well I have additional difficulties.
One particular thing which has infected me again recently is my desire for proof. I do believe in God and I have had many experiences which I think were spiritual. But still my mind asks me, do you have conclusive proof? It's a bit like those court trials which are based on circumstantial instead of hard proof. Oftentimes I can only trust like a child - and it's a very small trust. Yet I encourage myself saying Jesus only wants mustard seed faith, and that if He wants me to have a stronger faith He has to give it to me, I can't increase my faith on my own. By this I have learned to see faith not only as a pursuit of reason, it is not against reason, but neither does it only depend on reason.
G.K. Chesterton wrote that lunatics don't have not enough reason, they lack other things which belong to a sensible minded man. Reason usually works alright in all of us, it is other areas where we are lacking. Which leads us back to faith not as an intellectual pursuit (though it can be a theme of such a pursuit), but as a coming to someone and a staying with someone, a relationship of love and trust.
But it seems to me reason is important in that it works as our guardian. I mean, I can't take the stance some people take that reason is irrelevant or even against the faith. Because then I begin becoming completely irrational and in that process I am shattering my inward life until it is all broken and until really nothing makes any sense anymore and I don't know anymore what I am doing.
People really pursuit reason because of security reasons. We need to understand ourselves and our surroundings in order to know who we are, where we are, and what we are here for. And that is where I think faith can connect with reason. We just need to ask the RIGHT questions, the RELEVANT questions. We need to care about necessity and relevance. But, to bring in Chesterton again, such reasoning must be supplemented with other things. Rationality cannot safely discard the things that have no hard proof. It would be like throwing out babies with the bathwater. It is like you're in a house and you're dying of hunger and you know there is a loaf of bread somewhere. But you didn't put it in the fridge, you probably put it somewhere in your library. It doesn't seem like the right place for a loaf of bread, but that's simply the situation now. If you want to eat something it's the only place where to look. I admit this analogy is faulty because I could go out and eat something else somewhere else. But what if experience has told you that you need special bread without gluten? And no one in the village has such bread, except you, and it's the bread you know you had put in the library.
This is I think how I feel and think about the christian faith. It's the only faith that can answer our questions satisfactorily. It offers no readily available physical proof, but the circumstantial evidence for it is overwhelming. And it has been my experience that the christian life adds more and more such evidence to those who lead this life authentically. Everything is taken care of, the whole things becomes a sensible, cohesive whole.
I have read that the term "obedience" is rendered in greek language (the language of the New Testament), as "to be willing to be persuaded". The things of God which He tells us and which He commands us are things He is willing to fully persuade us to do and say. We are offered understanding and wisdom, St James writes that God gives wisdom liberally if we are willing to believe.
And in this wisdom I find the necessary collaboration of reason and faith. Reason alone, I agree with Chesterton, is not enough. It must be united to an element in us that remains with what it has seen as true. Otherwise reason has no substance to involve itself with. It would not be able to learn to differ between truth and nonsense. It would pay the same attention to foolishness, to errors and delusions, as to the weighty, important, necessary and true things.
My schizophrenia comes into these things as a tendency to place importance on things which are of no importance. Certain patterns in reality, for example. I have this thing going that I am always recognizing patterns in numbers, and making stupid connections. For example, I may notice when I play a computer game that my bank account has 666 gold pieces in it, and my schizo tells me, that's important, that's a synchronicity, the devil does something with me now, pray, read the bible, do spiritual warfare. But here wisdom can come in and say this is nonsense, don't busy yourself with nonsense! If I had only reason I would ask, where is the proof that this is only nonsense? But I cannot give hard proof that this is nonsense, I can only give circumstantial evidence. That's again where wisdom can say, this circumstantial evidence is enough, trust me. Wisdom, the collaboration of reason and faith, brings safety, it makes us obedient to God because we can understand Him and His truth now, to a sufficient degree. In wisdom, faith can relate to God and to the rest of what is. It brings divine perfection into our life, the perfection that is in the peace of God which guards our hearts and exceeds our reason. When something exceeds our reason, our reason doesn't know what to say. But wisdom can say, Wow, this is amazing! Or it says, Wow, this is beyond me!
Wisdom can bring about this loyatly to Heaven which God desires from us. Wisdom has this expansive view about the truth, it doesn't just connect the dots and make a web like model of reality like reason does when it is alone.
Christianity, in this day and age, is about a host of weighty and important things which help in life - but which also struggle against a world of falsity, a world which does a mad dance and doesn't want to sit at God's feet and listen. And this mad dance is the denial of the world of circumstantial evidence that speaks for God, and the insistence on the lack of hard proof.
In short, the christian faith is also about a sanity. When you open the book, the first thought you get is, is that madness and delusion, or truth and meaning? Is that my hell or my heaven? Am I safe in these teachings, or will they destroy my life?
I have spent many years with these questions. And struggled a lot. For example, for some time I thought obedience had nothing to do with persuasion. I thought it's like in a tyranny, you just submit promptly and such duty makes up your whole life, no matter how you feel about it. But in the truth persuasion is key, if it is allowed. This is also why Jesus went to the cross, so there would be something that makes us ask, what is that? That's why we have the bible, which in fact is a pile of pointers to God and substance for finding an authentic human cosmology. We're not given a note with a few words scribbled on it, and the command to believe them. We get a treasure chest full of many things which allow us to live more in the truth that we need so badly.
my coming to christianity in the last 11 years has been a pretty rocky road. At about the same time when I left my atheistic shell I got schizophrenia, and many times I did not know if religious faith is perhaps something delusional. So I have backslidden very often ... I kept a certain reverence for spiritual things but found it safer to keep a distance. Actually this had been pretty successful as far as my own subjective life was concerned. It seemed to me that when I cut out God I was happier and life was easier. But something kept nagging me, I was asking myself am I denying the truth? Isn't God my Father and shouldn't I believe in Him even when it wasn't so easy? I didn't give up the faith entirely and returned to attempting to lead a spiritual life again and again. At some point I got pretty sure that God exists and that He wanted me to put my faith in Him and to go on His ways. I got convicted about my sins and that if I wanted a future beyond death I needed to turn to God and to be obedient to Him.
But I have deep problems with my mind, because of the schizophrenia. When I engage in something religious, it is usually a struggle for me because while my spirit is willing, my flesh strives against my spirit, and since my mind isn't working so well I have additional difficulties.
One particular thing which has infected me again recently is my desire for proof. I do believe in God and I have had many experiences which I think were spiritual. But still my mind asks me, do you have conclusive proof? It's a bit like those court trials which are based on circumstantial instead of hard proof. Oftentimes I can only trust like a child - and it's a very small trust. Yet I encourage myself saying Jesus only wants mustard seed faith, and that if He wants me to have a stronger faith He has to give it to me, I can't increase my faith on my own. By this I have learned to see faith not only as a pursuit of reason, it is not against reason, but neither does it only depend on reason.
G.K. Chesterton wrote that lunatics don't have not enough reason, they lack other things which belong to a sensible minded man. Reason usually works alright in all of us, it is other areas where we are lacking. Which leads us back to faith not as an intellectual pursuit (though it can be a theme of such a pursuit), but as a coming to someone and a staying with someone, a relationship of love and trust.
But it seems to me reason is important in that it works as our guardian. I mean, I can't take the stance some people take that reason is irrelevant or even against the faith. Because then I begin becoming completely irrational and in that process I am shattering my inward life until it is all broken and until really nothing makes any sense anymore and I don't know anymore what I am doing.
People really pursuit reason because of security reasons. We need to understand ourselves and our surroundings in order to know who we are, where we are, and what we are here for. And that is where I think faith can connect with reason. We just need to ask the RIGHT questions, the RELEVANT questions. We need to care about necessity and relevance. But, to bring in Chesterton again, such reasoning must be supplemented with other things. Rationality cannot safely discard the things that have no hard proof. It would be like throwing out babies with the bathwater. It is like you're in a house and you're dying of hunger and you know there is a loaf of bread somewhere. But you didn't put it in the fridge, you probably put it somewhere in your library. It doesn't seem like the right place for a loaf of bread, but that's simply the situation now. If you want to eat something it's the only place where to look. I admit this analogy is faulty because I could go out and eat something else somewhere else. But what if experience has told you that you need special bread without gluten? And no one in the village has such bread, except you, and it's the bread you know you had put in the library.
This is I think how I feel and think about the christian faith. It's the only faith that can answer our questions satisfactorily. It offers no readily available physical proof, but the circumstantial evidence for it is overwhelming. And it has been my experience that the christian life adds more and more such evidence to those who lead this life authentically. Everything is taken care of, the whole things becomes a sensible, cohesive whole.
I have read that the term "obedience" is rendered in greek language (the language of the New Testament), as "to be willing to be persuaded". The things of God which He tells us and which He commands us are things He is willing to fully persuade us to do and say. We are offered understanding and wisdom, St James writes that God gives wisdom liberally if we are willing to believe.
And in this wisdom I find the necessary collaboration of reason and faith. Reason alone, I agree with Chesterton, is not enough. It must be united to an element in us that remains with what it has seen as true. Otherwise reason has no substance to involve itself with. It would not be able to learn to differ between truth and nonsense. It would pay the same attention to foolishness, to errors and delusions, as to the weighty, important, necessary and true things.
My schizophrenia comes into these things as a tendency to place importance on things which are of no importance. Certain patterns in reality, for example. I have this thing going that I am always recognizing patterns in numbers, and making stupid connections. For example, I may notice when I play a computer game that my bank account has 666 gold pieces in it, and my schizo tells me, that's important, that's a synchronicity, the devil does something with me now, pray, read the bible, do spiritual warfare. But here wisdom can come in and say this is nonsense, don't busy yourself with nonsense! If I had only reason I would ask, where is the proof that this is only nonsense? But I cannot give hard proof that this is nonsense, I can only give circumstantial evidence. That's again where wisdom can say, this circumstantial evidence is enough, trust me. Wisdom, the collaboration of reason and faith, brings safety, it makes us obedient to God because we can understand Him and His truth now, to a sufficient degree. In wisdom, faith can relate to God and to the rest of what is. It brings divine perfection into our life, the perfection that is in the peace of God which guards our hearts and exceeds our reason. When something exceeds our reason, our reason doesn't know what to say. But wisdom can say, Wow, this is amazing! Or it says, Wow, this is beyond me!
Wisdom can bring about this loyatly to Heaven which God desires from us. Wisdom has this expansive view about the truth, it doesn't just connect the dots and make a web like model of reality like reason does when it is alone.
Christianity, in this day and age, is about a host of weighty and important things which help in life - but which also struggle against a world of falsity, a world which does a mad dance and doesn't want to sit at God's feet and listen. And this mad dance is the denial of the world of circumstantial evidence that speaks for God, and the insistence on the lack of hard proof.
In short, the christian faith is also about a sanity. When you open the book, the first thought you get is, is that madness and delusion, or truth and meaning? Is that my hell or my heaven? Am I safe in these teachings, or will they destroy my life?
I have spent many years with these questions. And struggled a lot. For example, for some time I thought obedience had nothing to do with persuasion. I thought it's like in a tyranny, you just submit promptly and such duty makes up your whole life, no matter how you feel about it. But in the truth persuasion is key, if it is allowed. This is also why Jesus went to the cross, so there would be something that makes us ask, what is that? That's why we have the bible, which in fact is a pile of pointers to God and substance for finding an authentic human cosmology. We're not given a note with a few words scribbled on it, and the command to believe them. We get a treasure chest full of many things which allow us to live more in the truth that we need so badly.
