Eyre Lines

In “Lord, I believe”, I wrote:-

I have also written about the difference between faith and belief. Faith is love and trust. I love my wife, I trust my wife with my life, let alone my possessions; I love and trust her abolutely. But I do not believe absolutely – I could trust her, and my possessions or my life would not be safe, in fact – but I trust anyhow, I love anyhow. I believe that I am taking a calculated risk.*

The asterisk was added when I realised the terrible mistake I had made. Then I added:-

 * I would like to apologise unreservedly to my wife for writing that; she has read it, and cannot separate faith from belief in her mind, and therefore I have hurt her, and I would do anything not to have done that. But once said, it cannot be unsaid. I will write more separately about this, as I realise that people may still not grasp this important distinction.

I clearly need to try harder. Much harder.

So here it is. Faith is trust. It does not have anything essential to do with belief, though almost always people do not have faith in something they do not also believe. In the wider sense of “Faith in God”, it also means love – which is why I chose the example of my greatest and most abiding love apart from God, my own, my precious Nel, my other self, for whom I would willingly die, to draw a parallel from, but in a narrower sense, I do not always have to love as well as have faith in something.

How I feel about her is very movingly set out by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, 5:25-33:- 25 gHusbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and hgave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by ithe washing of water jwith the word, 27 so kthat he might present the church to himself in splendor, lwithout spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.1 28 In the same way mhusbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because nwe are members of his body. 31 o“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and pthe two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (ESV -source).

We are one. One body, one spirit, but not one mind.

Let me put it this way; if Nel were to say “Chris, jump under that train”, there is a chance that this might happen, because if she wants this it is clearly in the best interests of Chris/Nel as one body, one spirit. It’s a smallish chance, because SR (scientific rationalist Chris) would argue that this is a disproportionate and unreasonably absolute response, and would probably win (and EC did at least suggest this to the committee in my head, as Chris has hurt Nel and cannot put it right, and therefore death is the least he can do to make amends…). That is love and trust, and they are absolute, because they come mainly from EC (Emotional Chris), and EC is a creature of absolutes, black and white, all or nothing. They also come from GF, the bit of Chris which does connection with God and/or is God and confuses the heck out of SR.

Belief is different. SR is the one who does belief. Belief is a matter of weighing probabilities and assessing what course of action is most likely to be correct, what answer is most likely to be correct. SR is, after all, a scientific rationalist. He works on hypotheses; maybe things are like THIS. If so, how do we produce some more evidence that this is likely to be the case. We do an experiment; if it confirms the hypothesis, it becomes more probable that the hypothesis is correct; if it doesn’t, the hypothesis is junked and another one tried.

That is the overriding principle, though just one negative confirmation does not always produce the junking of an hypothesis if the hypothesis had previously a lot of confirming experiments and evidence and the hypothesis has worked to produce some results which are novel; perhaps the experiment was flawed or the result was an anomaly.

If an hypothesis has an overwhelming amount of confirmation from supporting experiments and data, and has produced a lot of new ideas which have also been confirmed that way, it may become a Theory in the scientific understanding of that. A Theory is much more than an hypothesis. Theories only tend to get adjusted subtly, because they WORK. However, just occasionally a Theory will show so much conflict with new data that it goes into crisis; it’s the only explanation we have, but it’s obviously not working in a significant number of cases. Usually, what happens then is a leap of imagination which produces a new hypothesis which explains all the stuff the old theory did and also the anomalous evidence; once tested enough, this can become a new Theory.

Generally when that happens, you find that the old Theory (which still works in the range of cases which were known before the anomalous results started appearing) proves to be a “special situation” in the new theory. Mostly, Theories break down in situations near some limiting condition. An example of this is Newton’s laws of motion versus Einsteinian relativity – the Theories of Special and General Relativity are broader and “more true” than Newtonian physics, but we still use Newtonian physics for calculations where it applies because the maths is easier. Newton still works well unless there’s very strong gravity, you’re talking about a very very small or very large scale or you’re talking about speeds close to the speed of light.

Notice, however, that this can NEVER PRODUCE AN ABSOLUTE TRUTH. Any Theory can be disproved by enough counterexamples. These are beliefs, and any belief can be wrong; the scientific rationalist must always accept that he can never have certainty about a Theory, a belief.

And, to use a different example, I board an airliner for a flight to Italy. I do not actually believe absolutely that the airliner will not crash, I do not believe absolutely that the pilot is competent. But I have faith that I will get to Italy that way. Faith always involves a leap beyond what it is possible to believe, in our scientific materialist world.

And that is a poor, weak kind of faith beside the faith I have in Nel, which is analagous to the faith I have in God. This is not just faith, it is faith and love, which is FAITH. It is absolute. It trusts beyond reason, beyond life, beyond comprehension.

The first commandment is this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). I try, and for the moment SR is outvoted.

And no, SR doesn’t really understand it.

It would seem that I love Nel the same way. Paul would, I think, understand.