Getting Faith Right. Part Two.

It was the during the 70's, the decade of bell-bottoms and Disco, (wore those, avoided that) when the word faith became a euphemism for religion. The intention behind this cultural move grew out of recognizing that not all people involved in faith were involved in any particular religion; many people were just spiritual. It was a proper intention, but something germane to the concept of faith was lost; and something innate to being human, something so complex and rich, has become even more obscured in our time.

Because faith is such a complexity, it will require us to approach it with complexity- to look at it from different angles and different analogies; to bring our full intelligence and patience; to consider new possibilities of what it means to be religious, not on a basis of a religion, but on a basis of our being Human, which is something that exists"on top" of being mammalian.

I felt so much distress reading in the comment section under "Getting Faith Right Part One" in learning of Robert's friend. I felt so much excitement though in reading the thoughtfulness of Peter Morgan's and Robert's insights. It's insights such as these that allow us poke and prod at the concept of faith, and clear a path from an abstraction back to its underlying experience.

Let me end this post on a word about analogies that I learned from my professor Dr. George Gianoulus from whom I learned Greek and hermeneutics. He was adamant in saying that any attempt to interpret the Biblical text literally, can only be done if one first understands the text literarily. Which meant we had to become versed in figures of speech. When it came to analogies this was his advice: "Think of analogies like four legged tables of which one of its legs is short; trying to make it stable on all four legs will only lead to frustration- letting it be stable on the three legs however, lets the table work fine."

This advise will serve us well as we poke and prod together.