Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Deep Thinking

I’ve been sitting here doing some deep thinking in preparation for my lesson out at the prison tonight. I have to have my act together because these guys are sharp as tacks, they are all willing and able to call a “B.S.” on a moment’s notice. One gentleman in particular is traveling through a rough patch with respect to the concept of “faith”. At one point in the recent past he was right there. Then some troubles arose at home external to the prison environment that he had no control over, that he truly wasn’t responsible for, and they are having a negative impact on him and his life in prison. Bottom line, he’s experiencing if not a loss of faith, then a questioning of faith. So for the last couple of weeks I’ve been pondering this issue of faith and attempting to explain to him how and why it works, and attempting to present it within the context of the assigned lesson content; and whatever I say, I have to believe it myself because they will be able to see the truth.
I’ve discussed this with a couple of friends in hopes that they could give me an idea or two on how to present this. In church last week one of my friends mentioned a statement by our leadership “ … faith has an extremely short shelf life …”. I can’t remember the context or who said it because my mind went immediately to this issue, and my pondering precluded me really hearing the rest of what he had to say. I got to thinking, and over the last few days I think I’ve figured out what it means to me. I think I’ll use it tonight. Here’s my analogy on faith, it’s actually pretty simple; simple ideas from a simple mind.
Faith is like a spiritual battery. When it’s all charged up, it provides us with good service. We use it in a wide variety of ways to guide us through our daily/weekly/monthly routine. We make many decisions every day based on faith. It’s our understanding and believes of the way things are when we don’t have sure-knowledge of facts, events, environments, and/or outcomes. But like a battery, if all we do is use our faith, if we don’t recharge our spiritual battery, then it eventually gets weaker and weaker and runs down.
I believe, and you’re welcome to your own opinion, but I believe that we charge our spiritual batteries through good works (any kind of service to others that is done without expectation for reward) and through reading and studying the scriptures. Sounds hooky, but there it is.
But much like a battery, we can ruin our faith with a negative charging cycle. In the best of batteries this can be accomplished with just one wrong polarity charging. Cease to do good service to your fellow man, cease to read the scriptures, or even simply read the wrong materials without comparative analysis to the scriptures and you’ve ceased to charge your battery.
Now much knowledge (different from faith) can be gained by reading/studying other peoples analysis of what the scriptures say. And knowledge will surely impact our faith on any subject, religion included, in both a negative and positive vain. The trick is to truly glean fact from fiction in the things we read (a true-ism regardless of the subject matter).
Soooo, how do we separate fact from fiction when reading someone’s analysis of a religious topic? On an intellectual basis I always try to determine if there’s an axe being ground, a perceived wrong trying to be righted, or questionable or unverifiable claims being made by either side. I attempt to determine if there’s a profit or leverage of any kind attempting to be obtained. And mostly, I attempt to ascertain the credibility of the guy making the claims. If I decide that any of these issues apply then I look at the proposed results with a jaundice eye. That doesn’t mean I totally disregard it; but I carefully weigh all that I know (there’s that word again) and attempt to discern whether or not advantage is being taken in any way.
That’s the philosophical beauty of the scripture. Not what someone tells you about the scriptures, but the actual scriptures; they don’t attempt to leverage anything from anybody, except “faith”.
In my few decades I’ve found many instances wherein someone wrote or said something that got my ire up (pro & con) and made me a passionate believer for a period of time, only to find out later that the conclusions I had come to were without foundation and totally wrong. With I finally figured these things out I usually discovered that I had reacted solely on emotion (… not faith, not knowledge … ) without performing my personal due-diligence on the topic at hand. I had acted either without faith, or in spite of faith; and that my actions had been based on what I perceived to be knowledge. And everyone knows that knowledge is fallible; that’s why we took so many tests in school … to determine the accuracy of our knowledge.
I’ve also discovered when I contemplate someone else’s opinion on scripture that I am best served by personally evaluating that opinion against the actual scripture. I can’t tell you how many times I have found that the opinion being read was being quoted/used out of context, that a false analogy was being proposed, and as such was totally without merit. Once this is discovered, a closer review will reveal that the author had an axe to grind, a perceived right to wrong, or was imply mean spirited.
The last point I’ve learned along this subject line, one that I’ve learned on a personal basis in the school of hard knocks is … we’re all simply human, making hundreds of decisions every day. And almost everyone has far reaching impacts, both good and bad, well beyond our personal vision and/or knowledge. I’ve also discovered that my actions, or the actions of someone subordinate to me, are almost always believed to be sanctioned by those at the next several layers of responsibility. I can’t tell you how many times that as Lieutenant Colonel I was held accountable and responsible for the actions of some Private hundreds of miles away. The presumption was always that I was in charge, they were in my command, therefore I must be responsible. Frequently, almost always, those individuals at higher levels of responsibility have absolutely no knowledge that the specific event occurred, nor do they understand the far reaching effects of the event in question.
So I guess my point is that “faith” is essential to spiritual well being. It trumps “knowledge” every time, and is more reliable than “emotion”. To keep your faith strong you need to be continually doing good works, being of service to your family, your community, your nation, and your God; and you must couple your good works to routine and regular study of the scriptures. To do otherwise will simple run your spiritual battery down and leave you susceptible to nefarious and evil influences. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!