1. Believe More

I don’t think it’s too soon to make my New Year’s Resolutions. I can start with the usual like eat less, exercise more, keep in better contact with family and friends, learn how to mediate, start practicing yoga – baby steps…. This is a good start I think. It is missing something though. I just read an op-ed in the New York Times called Taking Science on Faith by Paul Davies. It is about the inevitable and ironic intersection of science and religion in faith. He remarks that as a student he was told the job of the scientist “is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance.” This did not stop him from wondering about “why the laws of physics are what they are.” In other words, what is the source of these laws? Davies asserts that scientists, for good reason, are generally not too comfortable with this type of questioning. If reason desserts us at this point, “then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality.” Ultimately, like religion, science must rely on faith, “namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too.” We must believe in those things unseen, not “based on testable hypotheses.”

What my list is missing is believing more. Faith needs to be at the top of my list in red ink and underlined in bubble letters. Critical analysis and skepticism are healthy, productive and necessary but they are at some point useless. I can question the laws of the universe and the evils of humanity and will likely never know the truth of origin, of reason, of purpose and despondent give up the church, the Book, living life in its fullest but I don’t want to do this for where else would I go? Barbara Brown Taylor writes that it is with Jesus and within the church community “where we have heard the words of eternal life.” Here is “where we have come to believe and know the Holy One of God.” So, nurturing my belief, my faith in human goodness, in Christ, and in the good news gives me life and energy for the rest of my endeavors.

Amen.