On faith and evidence

An early morning thought - faith is not blind nor vainly hopeful. Faith is based on a growing body of personal evidence. Come hell or high water - I believe because the evidence for love is greater than the evidence of the finality of death. My evidence is congruent with the invitation in Psalm 34 - taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste is evidence based. Nothing about moral behaviour here, just trust. Happy the one who trusts in this Lord. Happy - as in 'what? me worry?' That and more. And I am not on a power trip. The problem for an observer of me - even me myself - is the subjective nature of the evidence and the deceptive nature of my inference engine. But still, given the uncertainty, my evidence is in me. This growing body of personal evidence is sufficient to the evidence of my growing body. There are no rules but the rule of the Spirit in the self-giving of Jesus leads to acts of maturing love even in me. Foolish perhaps? My human stubbornness transformed into tenacity, my inordinate desire into adoration, my darkness into light, his death in me and I in him into life. The other practical things do not go away: I still have investments, I still do business, I still must find words and works in community, I still worry over the state of things, and there are plenty of problems over which I do not have control. But the day by day, moment by moment hope does not leave me an orphan.

I repeat what I wrote yesterday because I hope it begins to get away from triumphalist Trinitarianism: I learned this personally in the death of Jesus through which I have learned to know the teaching of God. In itself, such Torah is anointing. And I add that this death is for me a beginning and a continuing because of his life in God that I believe is his resurrection. Don't believe me - if you have or if you haven't, try it for yourself.