“Blind Faith”

Recently, I was telling a Greek that there are non-Orthodox people whose interpretation of the Bible ends up in contradictions, and these people think it virtuous to accept the contradictions they’ve made, to affirm both sides and the contradiction itself.

“This is virtuous? Why?”

“Because it’s how they remain humbly faithful to Scripture. To what they think Scripture says, that is, of course.”

“They have taken the leap, then.”

“What leap?”

“The famous ‘leap of faith,’ the blind leap, the leap into the mysterious darkness.”

So I’ve been pondering that term, “leap of faith,” for a while since that conversation. It means, in effect, you just sort of talk yourself into deciding to believe and then, as it were, you close your eyes and jump. You take the plunge, blindly.

But listen again to what St. Paul says, that verse I am so fond of quoting, Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is the reality of things hoped for, the clarity (obviousness) of things unseen.” In other words, faith is not blind; to the contrary, faith is the surer way of perceiving and knowing. You don’t leap into the darkness; you embrace Christ, Who is not a dark unknown, but Who has revealed Himself (and hence, the Father) to us very intimately. You follow Christ, Who said, “Whoever follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of Life.” You don’t decide to throw reason to the winds and accept to be irrational if that’s what it takes, because it doesn’t take that. Christ is God’s own Reason, His Logos, and God is not irrational. (Deciding to overthrow your intellect is emphatically not what the biblical distinction between human reason and God’s Wisdom is all about.) I do not mean we should be able to understand everything, but I do mean we do not have to accept nonsense. Nonsense is always man-made and never inspired by God.

If you have taken the leap into blind faith, please, please, keep searching until you find the Light of the World, in Whom there is no contradiction and “no darkness at all”. Because ultimately, blind faith will fail you. Ultimately, blind faith shows up for what it really is: only a head game, a charade. You don’t need that; none of us needs that. We all need our eyes opened to the Real Thing.

Lord, have mercy!