On Faith and Intellect 

Perhaps this is the complicated way of saying that even though man can tell that there’s a God, man’s relationship with God doesn’t really take root without faith…something only God can give.  But he makes himself more open to this faith, when he studies and contemplates God.

One of the main points here is that there are two different levels of believing.  One natural and one supernatural.

The lower level (the natural one), is believing by our own faculties…like believing the bread will turn to toast when we put it in the toaster.  We feel the heat coming from it when we push the handle down.  We know that it has always produced toast in the past.  And besides, this is how our parents taught us to make toast.

The higher level is a little more complicated…and yet it’s a little simpler at the same time.  This is where we run into the ‘child like’ faith people so often misinterpret.  It’s not so much an absence of reason, but an absolute conviction even if reason (or at least, our own perception of reason) contradicts it.

The two levels never really contradict each other.  And one can exist without the other.  There are intellectuals who sincerely believe in the existence of God, but are never able to obtain that higher level of faith.

But sometimes a man with no more logical sense than a peanut can have enough faith to move mountains.  God, it would seem, is not a snob.  He never chooses the most likely candidates to endow with his strength.  And in that, I (as should you) take great comfort.  For I’m least likely for sainthood, so perhaps there’s some hope after all.

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