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.”
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.”