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Devotional Comments
Huston Smith tells of an experience of his daughter. Friends introduced Huston and his wife to a conversation piece resting on a coffee table. When activated, it would display a variety of colors that shifted like a kaleidoscope. The little daughter exclaimed delightfully, "I love it and I don't understand it at all, and that's why I believe in God."
(The Soul of Christianity)
The great faith traditions divide between two faculties of understanding. One faculty discerns the plane of Reality transcending the senses; the other faculty discerns matters pertaining to the senses. Here, we could speak of a faculty discerning "transcendence" and one discerning "immanence." In the West one faculty is intellect, called intellectus, gnosis, sapientia. Intellect is the intuitive faculty. The rational faculty is reason, or ratio, and is the logical faculty. The intellect understands in a nonlinear manner; the reason understands in a linear manner. Neither faculty is illogical or unreasonable, but they are different.
The daughter of Huston Smith evidences the joy of the intuitive faculty, or intellect. To the person attached to reason, the territory of Spirit beyond the confines of logic is a darkness that threatens: indeed, it does threaten--the false self. To the person exercised in intellect, the small world of logic is only preparation for the vastness of a Mystery she falls in Love with and enjoys with delight. Indeed, the domain of Pure Faith is so beautiful that the territory of reason is seen as like a shadow casts by the Great Sun pouring Light into the limited confines of logic. She who befriends the Divine Darkness, which the mystics teach us the eyes of reason cannot bear to look upon due to the brightness of the Light, finds reason a cramped cocoon compared to the expanse of Transcendence.
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Likewise, of vital significance is the following. The person exercised in intellect knows and appreciates the value of logic. However, the inverse is not true. The person not exercised in the limitless land of intellect cannot know the value of intellect. Why is this true? Intellect is a higher-order process than is logic. Now, at some level those living only in logic can logically appreciate the value of intellect, but logically appreciating is not the same as experientially appreciating.
This leads us back to the beginning story. The daughter says something with spontaneous glee that someone living only in logic can never say, for what she says can be experienced, truly, only through intellect. Can you say with glee, and really mean it: "I love God, and I don't understand God at all, and that is why I believe in God"?
Reflections
Remember a time when you felt an intuitive insight or awareness into the Mystery many call God. What was that like for you? Did it scare you? Did it delight you?
Do arguments for the existence of God appeal to you more than simply affirming God is Mystery, or vice versa? Explain.
Imagine the following scene. A Muslim walks up to you and speaks, "We believe in Allah. You believe in God. Are they the same?" What might you say? Why?
Do you tend to have to have matters about faith proven to you to trusts in them? Or not? Explain.
Do, or do you not, agree with the following statement: One of the greatest blasphemies of religions is the domestication of the Divine?
How might intellect and reason complement each other in faith?
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