Faith

A push pin on a bulletin board outside my college professor's office pierced an essay and secured it to the cork. The main idea of the essay was very clear: matter and energy and forces are all there is to life. Furthermore, the author proposed, emotions, consciousness, and perhaps what we call spirit are all chemical and electrical phenomena.

At the time I read those ideas, I used the concept of an "aha" moment to refute them. If all there is are chemicals and electrical signals, given the same input (words, visual stimulus, etc.), how would you get a different output? To specify, when the same words and other ideas are introduced to you, and you hear and understand on a certain level, what is the explanation for that experience turning suddenly in to an "aha" moment?

My answer, initially, was that it is the Spirit of God which delivers the "aha", when all the other variables remain the same. Of course this deus ex machina thinking isn't satisfactory, so the idea has been sitting on a shelf in my brain for some time.

Recently, on a related issue, I have realized that I have difficulty with the idea of faith. Believing something that you don't know to be true sounds a bit risky. Though scientists experience this on a regular basis as they conduct experiments, it becomes more problematic when the thing you are studying resists being knowable.

This is the case with the idea of the existence of God. To have faith in God is problematic for a scientist, for whom the data is inconclusive. It may be that an "aha" moment was mediated by the Holy Spirit, or it is equally probable that there is a mechanism of thinking that produces the same effect.

Of course, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Why can't the mechanism which produces "aha" moments be the tool with which the Holy Spirit speaks truth to our souls? What if, when our brains "hear" the language of the Spirit, it triggers the exact chemical electrical process that results in "aha" moments?

I want to be able to say, "I know." At church we bear testimony and say, "I know God is real." I've said this in the past, and I sometimes think it to myself. The reality is, I choose to believe that God is real. I am testing that theory the same way a scientist must choose a hypothesis before she can conduct a meaningful experiment.

Everything I know supports the idea that God is real. What makes this difficult is, everything I know can also support the idea that there is no God. So why do I choose to believe? The answer is simple, and somewhat childish (or maybe child-like?): I want to believe it is true. I like the idea of a Being who uses reason, who loves, and who can miraculously balance justice with mercy. These are attributes that I value. I like the idea of a divine Being who has a physical existence, because I am continually aware of the joy associated with having a body.

I like the idea of a God who uses chemistry and electricity (aha moments) to bring a sense of order (science) to our physical existence. I believe in God because I want to, it makes sense, and I believe that if everyone believed in God the way that I believe in God, the world would be a kinder, more justice-filled place full of learning and love and joy.