He's also a professed christian.
It makes no sense of course. There's that lovely Rennaisance assumption alive and well to this day, that says that rational and intelligent persons who "believe in science" cannot in all seriousness also believe in Christ. For me, science is as much an aspect of God's bountiful blessings to be a non issue. I have absolutely no problem with science and so on. For those who believe in Science, the issue of Faith is very difficult to grasp. Faith as a thing isn't easy to pin down in objective laboratory tests. It's not logical.
As I always say... You cannot know something until you're inside of it. You cannot understand the experience a thing until you're actually experiencing it.
Faith.
You cannot know Faith until you are living inside Faith.
There's no greater conundrum than to sit outside Faith and simply not "get it". It's like trying to make sense of a painting by Dali or a optical illusion by Escher. Even Rorschach tests make more sense than having Faith in Christ.
Hugo is correct when he implies that logic is irrelevant to Faith. Faith is something slightly to the left of actual belief too. One can believe many erroneous things as well as good and logical things. I believe in gravity and I also believe that man has walked on the moon! Some don't and that's still a belief which may - or may not - be wrong.
Faith however isn't "just" a belief - it's also a medicine, a crutch, a prop, a hope, a plea, an intuiting, a knowing, an emotional construct beyond mere beliefs in illogical things. It's watery, amorphous, esoteric, utterly illogical and asinine. Faith is a living, breathing entity in the metaphysical hearts of some people who cannot imagine life without it there.
The HOW of living out ones Faith is however, dependent on reason and logic in many instances. Even I have a wariness and scepticism of miraculous signs. One must weigh all things from the perspective of an altruistic love which can be difficult enough even with Faith. We're such a selfish kind of creature. Certainly, there are some scientific facts that one believes on the tangible, touchable, sniff-able evidence and to bend these can create a storm of protest in the mind too.
The WHY of living in Faith is a different matter entirely and its mostly subjective and emotional. It's so deeply set in the parts of a human being untouchable by the logic of science that unless you somehow tap into that untouchable "knowing" - you will never know.
This reminds me of the scenes in the recent movie Avatar where the Na'vi entwine nerve endings from themselves into the literal fabric of their environment. For many Christians, myself (and it seems, Hugo) included, this entwining into the Godhead gives us a perspective that's just not possible to convey to those who do not have the same entwined symbiosis to it.
To nearly misquote a line from Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" ....
Without Faith:
god is an overwhelming responsibility
Which I think is entirely true and quite logical really. There are many who profess to be Christians who's version of god is utterly reprehensible and I will have no part of their interpretation of the Christian Gospel at all! I cannot however, question their Faith - for I do not have the power to pass judgment on it when my sort of Faith is so exclusively my own
So, given that Faith is so hard to convey, the miracle in all of this is that lives continue to change - for a resounding "Better" to those who experience it - through the impact of Christ. It's as if there's some kind of magnetic attraction between the illogical dimension and various and sporadic persons. Once enmeshed inside that dimension, Faith eventually may (or may not) take root and flourish in the spiritual centre of the person. For me the embodiment of that dimension is Christ.
I may perhaps gain everything but I will lose nothing in owning this "foolishness".
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