Why we need faith?

No mat­ter how sophis­ti­cated your idea of God, it is still try­ing to put God in a box and say, “Ah ha. Now I’ve got it.” As soon as you say, this is it, and wor­ship your lim­ited con­cep­tion (whether it is more or less lim­ited than oth­ers con­cep­tions) and take the words of your books and teach­ers as final and com­plete, that is the begin­ning of idol­a­try, when we wor­ship the sym­bol as God and do not see it as sym­bol, for all we know about God is symbolic.

God must remain the ulti­mate, unknow­able other who is the great mys­tery behind every­thing so long as we are in this embod­ied mate­r­ial state of exis­tence. Espe­cially in unset­tled, trou­bled times such as we live in, many per­sons want final, black and white, con­clu­sive answers, but they’re just not real whether they come from the Chris­tians, Moslems, Hin­dus or who ever. I’m afraid we must always live with uncer­tainty, ambi­gu­ity and paradox.

That is why we need faith.


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