Sparks of Faith

Negativity on culture, especially in times of decay—but I wonder if times are any different when growth prevails—can only be effectively countered by the belief that somehow or other a radically different order exists somewhere—thus, poetically, beyond the borderzone.

What we observe, of that better world, is a striving in at least a portion of humanity touched in some way by one of the faiths. It is worth noting that the only rooting of these faiths is an inner agreement in individual souls; nothing external really supports it. But the external support I have in mind the sort of proof that stands up in court. Many, many things, events, processes can be demonstrated in that way but not the (call it hard) reality of a “kingdom not of this world.” That reality may be experienced, but experience is different in kind from demonstration. Let me look at the differences.

Experience is fundamentally individual, demonstration fundamentally social. Experience may contain something radically new, something no one else has ever seen, heard, or felt before. Demonstration depends on widely shared experience; therefore the unique can only be demonstrated by causing meaningful numbers of people to experience the unique themselves.

Experience also carries with it a certain characteristic. Let’s call that undeniability. When that quality is present (and sometimes it isn’t) the individual simply knows, meaning that no interpretation is necessary. Interpretation may also be problematical. In those cases interpretation is simply a quite secondary aspect, if applied to the experience, and its results cannot be demonstrated. An example. Someone dreams of an event and remembers the dream. A few days later the event actually takes place in the person’s ordinary, waking, daily life. Such an experience is undeniable. Interpreting that experience by saying that the future is already a fact and that dreaming sometimes allows us to see it adds nothing to the experience itself. The explanation may be true, partly true, or altogether false. The real explanation may be something very different. The experience itself, while undeniable, simply shows that the vast majority of people either do not have such experiences or do not remember them. The experience, furthermore, is not a demonstration of anything. But if vast numbers had such experiences, precognition would just be treated as a fact. One or two theories would have developed and would be competing—and no way to choose between them by demonstration.

There are also what might be called incomplete or fuzzy experiences. Dreams and visions fall into this category—seeing or hearing things in the dark, drug-induced states, etc. That they happened is undeniable to the person, but what they mean, being fuzzy, has no value whatsoever.

If we take a large number of people who have had near-death experiences and then we proceed to marshal masses of proof that our lives continue after death, we would be wasting time. That audience already considers that to be a given. We might as well gather football fans to prove to them that football exists. No demonstration is necessary.

This contrast between experience and demonstration indirectly illustrates the nature of faith—which gives people hope in a world that seems fundamentally hopeless. No amount of internal testimony from seers or prophets can demonstrate anything at all about a higher reality. Miracles? C.S. Lewis relied on them, but they cannot be demonstrated in the sense I attach to the word here. But faith arises anyway. It is at minimum a faint inner spark within believers that echoes and responds to the transmission of religious founders’ testimony. Call it the still small voice of intuition. Those sparks may be quite tiny, occurring weakly or rarely. Being weak and rare, the tumultuous noise of physical/social reality may mute them in good times, strengthen them in times of woe. Therefore the religious experience of humanity, viewed historically as a social phenomenon, is something of a mess. The serious cultivation of religious intuition deepens it. But, on average, that sort of cultivation only attracts tiny minorities.