Faith and Hope

I'm in a lazy and contemplative mood, which will translate into a cool blog post and a late night finally doing my homework.  This post has to do with a discussion with a friend about insanity and hope, a class discussion in Literary Traditions about Christian existentialism and my own struggles with and thoughts on faith.  These are all connected and make sense in my head, but I apologize if I don't communicate them right here.

There are so many things that we say in a trite manner and even call trite, but they are absolutely true and deep, the exact opposite of trite.  "God is good."  "God has a plan for you."  We think these sayings trite, because there seems to be an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.  We see a million things wrong with the world and we don't see any way that God could work this out.  We look at our lives and think that if there's a plan it was laid out by somebody a little sick and off.

I know more about secular existentialism (the Plague is a cool, depressing book, BTW) than I do about Christian existentialism, so please don't think I'm going as far as endorsing it.  We're reading The Brothers Karamasov in Literary Traditions right now and Dostoevsky is considered to be a Christian existentialist, so we ended up talking about Kierkegaard, the premier Christian existentialist.  Kierkegard believed that the most important choice was the one to believe or not to believe, the decision to jump off the cliff in a blind leap of faith.

I do believe that there is evidence for faith, but I don't think you can ever prove faith.  At some point, you have to quit weighing the evidence and leap.  This is not only for belief in God's existence, but belief in basic orthodoxy.  There is evidence for God's goodness.  The suffering in the world coexisting with God's goodness can be logically explained by man's fallen nature and free will.  However, that's only evidence.  The actual belief in God's goodness in your own personal life still has to be a jump off a cliff.

Same thing goes for believing that God has a plan for your life and that God's way is best.  A lot of the time it doesn't feel like any of that is true.  A lot of times it feels like that if God is working in your life, it's to trick you, to slam doors in your face.  We all know that you can't go off your feelings, but sometimes even the evidence seems to be against God.  At that point, you have to decide that even though you don't see a way out or any possible way this could end well, that you're still going to trust God.  Even more, you have to decide that even if this goes on just as terrible as it is now or continues to get worst, that you're still going to believe that God is good and that you're going to stick with Him and His way no matter what.  Defy the evidence and jump off the cliff.

Y'all all know that I despise Barack Obama, but I do like the title of his book.  Hope is audacious.  More than that, hope is illogical and insane.  Hope is believing in the moment you jump off the cliff that God will catch you.