"If (God) wanted me to believe he could certainly provide evidence that would convince me." No, not in the least.
What you describe is not Faith, it's fact. I don't have to 'believe' in a hamburger, I can hold & snarf any number of hamburgers. God is not hamburger...nor is He interested in providing 'proof' to Man beyond the proof in which we swim.
Reminds me of the David Foster Wallace story (from a graduation speech): "There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’”
Faith is not belief in the presence of proof indisputable (like God's fingerprints on a tree.....or His footprint in the garden) but belief in the absence of CSI forensics.
You wish to believe...so BELIEVE. We see Beauty; we feel Love; we are haunted by a sense of ineffable transcendence: what is all that other than 'proof'? As CS Lewis put it, "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."
"As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours.” Mark Helpin, "A Soldier of the Great War"
You say your 'rational mind keeps telling me' to be skeptical. To what purpose?
“Reason excludes faith.... It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but you can't do it absolutely. That's because you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. God is a postulate. I don't think God is interested in the verification of His existence, and, therefore, neither am I. Anyway, I have professional reasons to believe. Nature and art pivot faithfully around God. Even dogs know that.” (Helprin, again.)
I'm familiar with the argument that faith is belief in the absence of evidence. But I fail to see how that is an argument in favor of believing something. I realize many people would say it is arrogant to demand that God prove to me that he exists. But I am not demanding anything of the sort. If my Catholic school teachers were correct about God, I believe that he wouldn't condemn me for an honest lack of belief. I am not demanding proof. I am just pointing out that he has that option if he wants me to believe. If I am surprised to discover that there is an afterlife that includes Heaven and Hell, I will hope that I lived a good enough life, treating others well, that I have at least earned a place in purgatory if not Heaven.
One of my favorite TV shows was Lucifer. The premise is that the Devil decides to abandon Hell and take a vacation on Earth running a bar in LA. He ends up as a consultant to the LAPD. In the first season, a priest enters his bar to ask a favor. He wants Lucifer to help prevent a boy from becoming a drug dealer. Lucifer initially refuses, but he ends up befriending the priest. At the end of the episode the priest is shot and dies in Lucifer's arms. Before he dies he says to Lucifer "I didn't understand why God put you in my path. But now I realize he put me in yours." It was at that point I realized the show nominally about the Devil, actually had a very Christian message. No one is beyond salvation, not even the Devil. I am not sure that the Catholic Church would agree the Devil could be reformed, but it sounds like something the God I was taught about would want. Hopefully, I can be saved even if I lack faith. The alternative is everything ends. Either way, I am OK with it.
It's not an argument to believe anything. That is exactly the point. Faith is belief in the absence of evidence, in the absence of Proof (as in Proof, with a capital P) but not in the absence of what our heart tells us is true.
It is knowing without the sworn affidavit, absent the notary, without a single repeatable experimental finding. Still, we know.
I'm not saying you're demanding anything. Nor am I suggesting that God would condemn you for a lack of anything. Who am I to offer a Guide to God's thinking, assuming God thinks? I'm not even particularly concerned about your salvation, or lack thereof -- that issue is not mine.
But when you say you starve for Belief.. when you tell us you suffer in its absence...then I say Believe. When you hesitate or back away from such a leap because you've somehow come to feel that Belief is a 'sucker's game' (not to put words in your mouth but that seems like what you'd say)....I say Believe anyway! Choose it; embrace it. The only one to say you're a 'sucker' is you. So don't say it. Just Believe. Have Faith. Choose Faith.
Look at the glories of the world which surround you. The beauty of the ineffable. The sweetness of a single note, the Mother's softly lingering touch of her child's sleeping face...and Believe.
I'll leave you with one last Helprin quote, also from A Soldier of the Great War:
"...and even when I was broken the way sometimes one can be broken, and even though I had fallen, I found upon arising that I was stronger than before, that the glories, if I may call them that, which I had loved so much and that had been darkened in my fall, were shinning even brighter and nearly everytime subsequently I have fallen and darkness has come over me, they have obstinately arisen, not as they were, but brighter.”
"If (God) wanted me to believe he could certainly provide evidence that would convince me." No, not in the least.
What you describe is not Faith, it's fact. I don't have to 'believe' in a hamburger, I can hold & snarf any number of hamburgers. God is not hamburger...nor is He interested in providing 'proof' to Man beyond the proof in which we swim.
Reminds me of the David Foster Wallace story (from a graduation speech): "There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’”
Faith is not belief in the presence of proof indisputable (like God's fingerprints on a tree.....or His footprint in the garden) but belief in the absence of CSI forensics.
You wish to believe...so BELIEVE. We see Beauty; we feel Love; we are haunted by a sense of ineffable transcendence: what is all that other than 'proof'? As CS Lewis put it, "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."
"As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours.” Mark Helpin, "A Soldier of the Great War"
You say your 'rational mind keeps telling me' to be skeptical. To what purpose?
“Reason excludes faith.... It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but you can't do it absolutely. That's because you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. God is a postulate. I don't think God is interested in the verification of His existence, and, therefore, neither am I. Anyway, I have professional reasons to believe. Nature and art pivot faithfully around God. Even dogs know that.” (Helprin, again.)
We should too.
Best wishes on your journey!
I'm familiar with the argument that faith is belief in the absence of evidence. But I fail to see how that is an argument in favor of believing something. I realize many people would say it is arrogant to demand that God prove to me that he exists. But I am not demanding anything of the sort. If my Catholic school teachers were correct about God, I believe that he wouldn't condemn me for an honest lack of belief. I am not demanding proof. I am just pointing out that he has that option if he wants me to believe. If I am surprised to discover that there is an afterlife that includes Heaven and Hell, I will hope that I lived a good enough life, treating others well, that I have at least earned a place in purgatory if not Heaven.
One of my favorite TV shows was Lucifer. The premise is that the Devil decides to abandon Hell and take a vacation on Earth running a bar in LA. He ends up as a consultant to the LAPD. In the first season, a priest enters his bar to ask a favor. He wants Lucifer to help prevent a boy from becoming a drug dealer. Lucifer initially refuses, but he ends up befriending the priest. At the end of the episode the priest is shot and dies in Lucifer's arms. Before he dies he says to Lucifer "I didn't understand why God put you in my path. But now I realize he put me in yours." It was at that point I realized the show nominally about the Devil, actually had a very Christian message. No one is beyond salvation, not even the Devil. I am not sure that the Catholic Church would agree the Devil could be reformed, but it sounds like something the God I was taught about would want. Hopefully, I can be saved even if I lack faith. The alternative is everything ends. Either way, I am OK with it.
It's not an argument to believe anything. That is exactly the point. Faith is belief in the absence of evidence, in the absence of Proof (as in Proof, with a capital P) but not in the absence of what our heart tells us is true.
It is knowing without the sworn affidavit, absent the notary, without a single repeatable experimental finding. Still, we know.
I'm not saying you're demanding anything. Nor am I suggesting that God would condemn you for a lack of anything. Who am I to offer a Guide to God's thinking, assuming God thinks? I'm not even particularly concerned about your salvation, or lack thereof -- that issue is not mine.
But when you say you starve for Belief.. when you tell us you suffer in its absence...then I say Believe. When you hesitate or back away from such a leap because you've somehow come to feel that Belief is a 'sucker's game' (not to put words in your mouth but that seems like what you'd say)....I say Believe anyway! Choose it; embrace it. The only one to say you're a 'sucker' is you. So don't say it. Just Believe. Have Faith. Choose Faith.
Look at the glories of the world which surround you. The beauty of the ineffable. The sweetness of a single note, the Mother's softly lingering touch of her child's sleeping face...and Believe.
I'll leave you with one last Helprin quote, also from A Soldier of the Great War:
"...and even when I was broken the way sometimes one can be broken, and even though I had fallen, I found upon arising that I was stronger than before, that the glories, if I may call them that, which I had loved so much and that had been darkened in my fall, were shinning even brighter and nearly everytime subsequently I have fallen and darkness has come over me, they have obstinately arisen, not as they were, but brighter.”