Here’s a poem by Ben Witherington III that I greatly appreciated.
We demand the evidence,
A clear and certain sign,
We show no bit of reticence
Ask God to please divine.
Here a little miracle,
Or there a stellar light
To shine upon our darkness
And give us all insight.
But what if God’s not hidden,
Not remote or too aloof,
What if we’re just blind
And cannot handle proof?
What if all the world’s a stage
And the play’s long been going on,
But we’re not paying attention
Or listening to the song?
What if the heavens shout ‘glory’
And the rocks and all the trees
But we’re too damn distracted
To fall down on our knees?
What if believing leads to seeing
Not the other way around,
What if believing’s our 3-D glasses
To see the more profound.
In a world of truth decay
We perish for lack of hope
We settle for compensation
For that which helps us cope.
A visionary person
Is one who believes the most,
She sees the path before her,
But she trusts the Holy Ghost.
If you ignore all the evidence,
Then you cannot handle proof,
Only open hands receive it,
Only open minds find truth.
BW3 2/17/07 (Ben Witherington III)
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.
* Woody Allen
“There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn” -St. Augustine.
Woody Allen’s comment I can understand. Augustine had a few good things to say–this wasn’t one of them.