I am a believer. Always have been at some level, and I don’t know why. I know only that it probably is part of my spiritual DNA. It has nothing to do with religions, which, in my opinion, have coalesced over time around the lives of exceptional people into hardened systems which don’t take kindly to questioning. I do like organized, spiritual thinking, however, and so found a philosophy that helps me give rational form to my somewhat inchoate, mental ramblings. I am content with this. It lets me question to my heart’s content and still gives me a way to go when things get hairy as human beings seem to insist on killing each other over their “differences.”
Easy for some....
Being a believer has been easy for some. Philosophers like Kant and Descartes simply plopped a God into their contemplations to give them backing. Others, like Hegel with the World Historical Spirit, and Jaspers, with his Existenz, were a bit gauzier about it. Then, of course, there is science which often reasons away the need for belief because of its capacities to go to the limits of thought with the Big Bang.
Doubt and wonder simply show us we're alive...
Being a believer has not been easy for others. Some want to suspend reason altogether and go straight to a system they probably inherited. But reason cannot be set aside because it can get us to a part of where we want to go. I think there is nothing whatsoever the matter with questioning. It can unbind the ignorant and keep us from too much certainty about that which cannot be made certain. Doubt and wonder simply show us we’re alive and in the game. The question of being is an ocean in which we will always be swimming.
Close to answering some soul questions...
I think that no one can know for us what we can only know for ourselves…not the wayshowers who can only show ways. I also think that knowing, at least in the world of belief, is tenuous at best. We should not fear the sometimes wondering but move into it instead, for here is the aliveness of belief. As far as I am concerned we are not lost and never have been. In the dark at times, maybe, but evidences, like light, show up along the road. If we develop kindness, compassion, loving concern about others, perhaps we are getting closer to answering some soul questions.
But, then, this is part of my belief.
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