Faith and Belief

            Every once in a while somebody tries to find Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat in Turkey.  They never seem to succeed, but they try anyway.  It always makes the news, and somebody is always disappointed when there is failure.   I’m always amazed at the attempt because it again points to the problem that we have about the Bible when we try to prove the things that are in it.  Where was the Tower of Babel?  Can we find the Garden of Eden?  If we were somehow able to do these things, what would it matter?  The problem that we have is that we confuse faith and belief.  We think that belief is about facts, provable facts that can be determined by investigation.  Faith is a different thing; it is something in our hearts that doesn’t require factual proof. 

            Archbishop Ussher decided a couple of hundred years ago that the earth was created in 4004 BC and that all things began with that.  That has been a cornerstone of fundamentalist thought ever since.  That is why there is confusion over why the dinosaur remains seem to be dated so much earlier and that fossils seem to show up of things that predate everything else.  For those who are enamored of 4004 BC as a starting place for earthly life, this kind of thing needs to be explained.  Mostly, explanations don’t work very well, and the fundamentalists are left with a need to find a way to continue to believe these things when the facts seem to say otherwise. 

            Story is the primary ingredient in the Bible.  Jesus taught in parables.  We don’t need to have proof that the Prodigal Son lived at such and such a place, or that the woman who lost her coin had a particular house.  We understand these to be stories that tell truth, not that are truth.  We get terribly confused when we try to create facts to back up biblical stories.  It isn’t really important when, where and how.  What is important is the truth that these stories tell.  The Gospels tell us that Jesus taught always in parables.  That is because stories are the best way to convey real truth, particularly about moral issues. 

            One of the great problems that we have is the nature of our religious belief.  Over the years, the churches have split away from each other, generally because of differences in doctrine.  The Anglicans became the Church of England after Henry VIII left the Roman Catholic church because of his disagreement with them about divorce.  Luther posted his theses on the cathedral door and began the Protestant Reformation.  This, in turn broke into a number of other denominations, and we haven’t stopped.  Religion has been the cause of most of the terrible wars that have been fought.  Certainly the Sunni-Shiite division is fueling the war in Syria and the revolutions in Libya, Egypt and other Middle Eastern sites have had their basis in religion.  When we fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, our opponents were all religiously oriented people who had their own agenda.  Religion has been most often a cause of division, seldom has it been a solution.  

            Jesus taught us to love one another.  He showed us the depth of his own love by laying down his life for all of us.  What he asks us to do is to help one another with our pain; to feed, clothe and shelter those of us who have nothing and to provide for the widow and the orphan in their need.  He did this continually while he was with us and he sent his followers out to continue that work.  Our mission is to keep faith with each other.  That is really all of the religion that we need.