Flat Faith - 3

Often belief can come through a crisis of faith. I told you I was a good little boy, but by the time I became a youth, I had done many things that shamed me. I won't bore you and embarrass myself by recounting them. I am sure they are common to most teenage experiences anyway, but I had this guilt thing, that I was carrying around with me. It was not a conscious burden. It was subliminal and perhaps for a lot of it I assumed responsibility for my family situation. Kids often feel the guilt for parents who divorce, that sort of thing. Well I went to a Christian church camp. I loved camping and had no idea what a church camp would entail. Well a preacher there offered me forgiveness for all my sin if I accepted Jesus as my saviour. The only thing I understood was the forgiveness of sin thing and a new life in place of the old. I became a new person. Perhaps it was the freedom from guilt, or the discovery that God was somehow interested in me as an individual, that did it. I don't know but I was euphoric for days. It was such a powerful experience that it has taken me most of my life to even challenge it. I subsequently joined that Church and believed the teachings they gave. Certainly, I have often questioned, and occasionally modified, my beliefs, but that was simply a beginning. It has been a privilege to see the Church change, sometimes radically. I have been horrified to hear of how the Church invented doctrines to explain wrong practices in the church. To stay honest to a belief, change is essential.

I once told someone about my conversion experience, but he was so sad. He wanted to believe but could not. He said that he was envious of my experience that allowed me to believe.

I thought about his words for a long time. I needed to understand his problem. For me it was so easy. Why was it not so for him? He was searching. I wasn't and when the invitation was made I responded whole-heartedly. I guess that to be an earnest searcher he was a believer already. If one is a believer, small changes are easy, particularly if they are logical, reasonable or obviously more correct than before. Accepting a religion is no reason to accept blindly everything they say. If a faith cannot change with the times, it may be out of date. Even the law of a country changes to accommodate changing circumstances.

One of the most fascinating experiences I have had as a Christian believer is to know God's voice. Now I am not talking about a day-to-day thing, otherwise, I would be a true prophet, but on special occasions, it can be to know things that otherwise would be impossible to know. I explored this phenomenon in my book called Adam's Clay. I could describe it as something I know that I know, or else, as an imperative thought. It not often knowledge about the unknown, but could be something less dramatic like I must write an article on Flat Faith.

Flat Faith - 2

As opposed to 'fact based faith', I developed a character trait that says 'Don't confuse my theory with your facts'. Once I have come to understand something it is hard to change it.

Belief systems fall into this category, so 'Once I have come to believe something it is nigh on impossible to change it'. Why is this?

Well perhaps it's that much of what we believe is actually unbelievable. If we make it over the hurdle to get to believe the unbelievable, no reasoning, argument, fact or persuasion of any kind can undo that process. So what then can change it?

Well facts, real undeniable facts are good. I once had a beautiful knife and I practised throwing it hoping to turn it into a more useful weapon or something. My uncle, (the farmer) warned me that it would break if I was not careful. I didn't believe him. I believed in my knife until I threw it badly and it broke. That fact was now undeniable. My heart was broken too. I loved that knife.

I have already hinted at my aversion to 'facts' as a basis of belief. Unfortunately, facts are often misused and unreliable.

Facts bombard us by the dozen daily. Some are rather transparent - 'Nothing washes whiter than …' Hearing that persuades me to use the nothing, as it is better.

Some people prefix facts with millions of years ago. How could anyone prove what happened millions of years ago? Anyway, those who use this technique change their facts regularly.

People use statistics as substitutes for facts …. Need I say more?

Almost without exception, we are given facts that are impossible for us to verify.

A very common trick is to use non-scientific users of products to quote scientific facts about the products. How could they know?

All too often hypotheses masquerade as facts, especially by the scientific community. I stopped at the non-fiction science shelf in a bookshop recently. My opinion of the books was that I would find more truth in the fiction shelves than there. Scientists today have an impossible task. They must tow their academic establishment's official line and at the same time announce astounding new discoveries. I would say that they needed to accept (believe) the official line completely in order to make any completely honest announcement. Do you think this makes for open and honest scientific facts?

However, don't only blame the scientists for this. The churches do the same and they do it in the name of God. The church decides in a council what the Bible says. They claim that the Bible is the Word of God, but they still have the arrogance to make a collection of teachings, they call doctrines, and declare this is what the Bible says. Thus, on the one hand, we have the writings of men and on the other hand, we have the Word of God. You choose.

Have a declaration of belief, by all means, but don't cast it in stone. Casting something in stone makes it law and the apostle Paul wrote a strongly worded letter to the Church in Galatia about the danger of reverting to law after receiving freedom and grace from God - the grace was freedom from the law. Read it in a modern translation, so you can understand it easily. It will take about half an hour to read.

Flat Faith - 1

I'm sure they sent me to school for no other reason than to define my faith systems. Perhaps refine them would be a better description.

For example, they told me that I believed the Earth was flat, but it was actually round. Well I didn't believe that the Earth was either flat or round. To me it was very bumpy and went either up or down.

Even at a very young age, my own observations entirely determined my belief system, particularly things that interested me, like cars, trucks, tractors and engines. Later I graduated to guns and electronics, and now more recently to computers. I was more interested in how they worked than in using them.

Now a flat Earth could mean squashed flat, like a flat tire. My Earth was nothing like a flat tyre. How about flat out, which was akin to 'foot flat'? These days they say 'peddle to the mettle', but my Earth was going nowhere, certainly not fast let alone flat out. These days they say, 'Stop the Earth I want to get off.' When I heard that, I laughed, and when I understood it, I cried. Perhaps flat could mean smooth or level, under other circumstances, but my Earth was never that. Even the sea had huge waves and moved up and down all the time, but I was always a good little boy and if I must believe that I previously thought the Earth flat and now should believe that the Earth was round, I would remember to say that if anyone asked.

What I did, was store the matter away for future exploration. I do this with many misleading ideas and so-called 'facts' that I hear. Questions that create difficulties I remember and not much else. If I understood something, I don't need to remember it. I can work it out. I am still working on the one that 'money doesn't grow on trees', which is a strange one because my aunt said it and as a farmer's wife, she surely knew that money does grow on trees.

Once I provisionally accepted that the Earth was round, it opened me up to making observations that supported that 'belief', such as ships that sailed over the horizon and a myriad other facts that confirmed the concept. I came to believe that the Earth is round. Later someone persuaded me that it is not perfectly round but slightly flattened by its rotation about its axis. Since logic or reasoning was the basis of my belief, it was easy to make the change.

It is important to understand that no facts were necessary in this case for me to change my mind. Facts would be unverifiable for me and therefore useless. The simple assertion was most reasonable and therefore readily acceptable.