Faith and Proof

            When I was diagnosed with a large menengioma on the left frontal lobe of my brain, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.  I went to a neurological surgery practice in Charleston, WV, where we were living at the time.  They looked at the MRI and scheduled surgery very quickly.  I remember going to the hospital, getting ready for the surgery and lying on the operating table waiting for it all to happen.  The only thought that went through my mind at that moment was that I had no idea what it was that was going to happen; but whatever it was, whether I lived or died, I was going to be all right.  That was a terrifying thought.  Rosie and my kids were in the waiting room with an enormous stake in this day.  They needed me and I needed them.  My certain desire was that I would live and be back with all of them.  All of a sudden, on that operating table a quiet calm came over me and my worry stopped.  I know that was God speaking to me about my condition.  As it turned out, they were able to completely remove the tumor and I went on with my life; not without a few complications, and if you talk to Rosie, it took a couple of years for me to really recover and get what we know as my personality back.  I had been very depressed and had no emotion at all, which is what happens when the frontal lobe of the brain is involved.  It was a kind of a natural lobotomy.  Waiting for the brain to expand back into the space left by the absent tumor took some time.

            God is with us in the time of trouble. That is something that became so vivid for me during that experience. In peaceful times, when all is going right, we don’t worry about where God happens to be.  We take care of things for ourselves; but when trouble comes, and we have no power to surmount what faces us, we need God to be with us, and we need to know that.  The only way that works is by the power of faith.  Faith can sound like a kind of a mystical word; one that doesn’t have much substance connected with it.  Having faith gets linked with having hope; kind of in the realm of maybe.  That isn’t what I mean at all.  Faith is a condition that doesn’t require proof.

        Proof is a word that gets connected to science and facts.  We like to look at facts because they substantiate the theories that we put forth to explain the world.  The problem with this is that much of what we have in this world is incapable of explanation.  Global warming is certainly with us.  Scientists have been warning us about this for a long time.  Politicians, who have particular axes to grind, want to dispute this phenomenon and make claims that scientific facts are not proof.  When we look at this issue devoid of politics, it becomes clearer that the world is indeed in trouble if we don’t do something about global warming.

            Faith has much in common with trust.  We don’t always have good answers to the things that we encounter in this world.  Faith is the quality that enables us to trust that there are answers for us that we are unable at the moment to see.  We have the story of Jesus and the disciples in the boat on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of a storm.  The disciples are frantically trying to keep the boat afloat while Jesus sleeps serenely in the stern.  The disciples awake him with the great comment: Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Jesus woke up, rebuked the wind and told the sea to be still.  He then said to his men:  Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?  It was then that they were in awe of him.

            That is the essence of faith; the ability to believe, even when the world is turning upside down around you. That certainly isn’t easy.  It is a gift from God that comes to us when we desperately need it.