Lighthouse by Jina Wallwork
These events will attempt to shape your body and your mind. Through reasoned argument people will try to push you beyond the faith that you feel. Faith will never submit to reason because that isn’t what faith is. It has such a strong relationship with hope because they are both lights that shine in the darkness. They are the feelings and thoughts that console us through the most difficult of times. You can’t substitute faith with reason because they’re so different. Faith is an answer and reason is a question. They aren’t always going to be talking about the same thing.
Through faith you can feel the answer and that feeling can sometimes make it difficult to ask the right questions. Who searches for the perfect question when they already have the answer? Reason is the pathway to a perfect question, yet faith may not be the answer to the question that is being asked.
People often suggest that reason is superior to faith, while others suggest the opposite view. The truth is superior to both of the pathways that attempt to seek its presence. Reason and faith are both pathways to the truth. Faith tells me that I don’t need to see the truth in order to know that it’s there. Faith is the lighthouse that tells me the land is present even when I can’t see the shore.
It’s easy to presume that faith and reason are in conflict with each other, yet they both require the presence of the other. Faith tells me that there is a truth that is worthy of investigation. It summons our reason and intellect because they always encourage us to seek out greater clarity. We want the invisible to become visible.
People argue that faith encourages people to prove a theory rather than discover the truth, but this isn’t faith, it is merely adherence to tradition. Reason needs to have a foundation of faith. True faith asks that everything is brutally challenged to a point where you risk total despair and your own destruction. Faith tells you that such a process is necessary and preferable. If something is true then it is always proved by someone’s attempts to disprove it. Faith tells you that there is nothing to fear in embracing this process. Faith will tell you that land is present and guide you to the shore, yet it is incapable of revealing everything. There are some things you must see for yourself.
