I am back

I am back from Lent now.

Lets start our return to the internet with bitter ramblings.




We all place our trust in something, all the time. When that trust is broken, conflict arises. Simple enough, right? Even teen trendy magazines get this: "Angelina Jolie Stabs Brad in the Back - Divorce Papers Being Processed NOW."

We all crave a place to put our trust. Not only do we crave it, we REQUIRE it, in order to function naturally. It's impossible to live without placing your trust somewhere. The problem arises when the vessel we endow with our trust is incapable or unwilling to fulfill our expectations of them.

For example, if I drive everywhere every day, I have trust in my car, that the motor will work and I will get to where I need to go. If my car breaks down, then I feel angry, betrayed. I know my car has no consciousness; however, I am angry, because I trusted my car to get me to work or school, and now I've been stranded. This betrayal can be redirected too, towards the mechanic with whom I have endowed an amount of trust on the functioning of my car, or to my family, who drove the car last and obviously forgot to put oil in it.

On the other hand, if I get in my car, knowing full well that the oil has been low for months, the tires are flat, and the battery is dead, and something goes wrong, while I still may feel angry, I don't feel as betrayed. The frustration I feel is different.


So that is that righteous angry, that feeling of betrayal we feel. It's because something we trusted didn't come through for us. However, as far as I know, every person has COMPLETELY unrealistic standards for the people that they trust. So it's a self-fulfilling prophesy, the process of trusting anything or anyone; everything fails everyone completely and utterly.

Where is a person to place their trust then? According to the bible, it's God. The unique thing about placing trust in an omnipotent and omnipresent being that is invisible is that a person can never quite tell when they are being failed. Say, for instance, that there were no God to place this trust in; it wouldn't matter, because if there were, that being knows all, and therefore is incapable of making mistakes. And the bible says that the christian God is one with our best interest at mind, so that means that any misery or seeming betrayal of trust is intentional, for our best interest.

However, an invisible being that makes no form of obvious contact poses a problem. Because there is no communication between God and man, man is incapable of knowing the intent behind occurrences. And because man can't know the intent, man also can't know whether his trust has been betrayed. The "working out" of a situation may be due to nothing more than positive thinking or random chance, or it maybe be due to the workings of God. Man has no way of knowing. A person who believes God pulls all strings is quick to believe that happiness is a blessing from God, and pain is a curse; however, beyond blind faith, there is no way to know what the operator behind those actions is.



Faith seems like a shortcut. I have faith that my car will start when I go outside (well, sometimes I do), because in the past, when I turn the key, my car starts. I've also seen many other cars start by turning a key. I don't need to have someone show me or explain exactly what is happening for me to believe it will work. Faith takes me from point A to point M without having to go to every point in the middle. But is it faith then?

Is faith believing or expecting something without any reasons whatsoever that it will occur? Because that is very contrary to anything I feel I can accept. Many times, when I explain that I have trouble believing in God, people tell me to have faith, and God will reveal himself. If the God they are talking about is the same God that the bible is talking about, all-powerful and all-knowing, He is not confined by my having faith or not, and therefore whether or not I have faith, He should be more than capable or revealing himself. It seems counter-intuitive to believe something for the sake of believing it in hopes that you'll believe it. I don't even think a person can choose when they believe.


So in that case, my conclusion is that faith and trust seem to be pretty closely tied, no person can shoulder the burden of another's trust without failing, people need an unfailing source for their trust, and placing trust in a non-responsive deity is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Alright, for next time, we'll talk about why that deity is non-responsive, i.e. my issues with prayer.


~wes~