Sense of Faith

When I read "What Is a Miracle" on the Two Natures blog, I was reminded of something I had thought about before: What if faith was a faculty, similar to the other senses, which gives us a different impression or understanding of the world we live in? For instance, the sense of touch gives us one understanding of something, whereas, the sense of hearing, a totally different impression altogether. The sense of sight expands our understanding of physical reality even further.

As an analogy, imagine a world where everyone is blind; where no one has ever known sight - they have no idea what light or color is . They wouldn't know that when your foot hit a stone, it was an object set in a certain place, or if you suddenly felt warmth on your face, it was the sun which had broken through clouds unknowingly hanging miles above them in the sky. If someone came along and could see, it would seem like much of his behavior was miraculous. He would never bump into things, and he would consider the technologies of this blind world as needless weights - he wouldn't need them to maneuver through this world.

In a physical sense, hearing is much lower on the frequency spectrum than vision. And the amazing freedom of movement that comes with the ability to "pick up" or "sense" the higher frequencies is exponentially greater. Our understanding and depth of insight is phenomenally enlarged by the capacity to "see".

So, with sight comes an enlarged view of reality. With being able to perceive the higher frequencies comes a higher understanding of the physical nature of things.

What then would happen if our capacities were enlarged even further? If we had a sense to perceive higher frequencies? The same result would ensue. Our interpretation of the world would completely change based on this new way of perceiving the world around us.

Maybe this is the faculty of faith. Instead of seeing reality as static and immovable, reality suddenly becomes the playground of faith where all things are possible. Perhaps that may be why Christ could walk on the water. To us it was a miracle; to him it was perfectly natural. That may be why the many amazing and miraculous things Christ did were too numerous to count - He was acting on his natural understanding of the world through the sense of faith.

He knows we are weak, so he says, "Ask anything in my name and it shall be done for you". When we exercise our faith in Christ, we are revealed to be children of God, and creation is liberated from its bondage. When we are blind, we bump into the rock. When we are sighted, we walk around the rock, and as children of God, we say to the rock, "Be thrown into the sea", and it obeys us. We rule over the earth and subdue it.

As you look at all of our marvelous technologies, you suddenly realize they are like white canes for the blind - we need them to navigate through our world of unbelief. Think about this in contrast to a world perceived with the sense of faith where all things are possible to him who believes.

As I said in my comment to the blog mentioned above, this is just a crude analogy and part of what makes blogging fun.