The Challenge of Faith

People of a conservative persuasion tend to be religious, liberals less so, polls report.

This, given the differing attitudes, is not a surprise.  Conservatives don’t believe in heaven on earth – man’s imperfect human nature won’t permit it.  As a result they recognize man’s need to believe in God (even for those on the right who are skeptical of His existence).  And most have faith in Him.

Liberals and their allies on the left often share a different faith.  That is that human nature is not immutable.  With appropriate education and guidance, humans can be improved and moved toward perfection (as in retaining positive virtues and rejecting the negative ones).

A secular heaven on earth is the goal. (Those willing to absorb the lessons of history would know that such efforts have never succeeded and often cause untold misery – think USSR.)  Wishing that the unchanging nature of human nature weren’t a fact is, at the very least, foolish.  But it is, still, the faith of many on the left.

But reality can also shake a conservative’s faith in God.  Years ago, Harold Kushner, a prominent theologian, wrote a popular book entitled When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

The logical follow up question is why? The answer is because they do. 

Sure, one can opine that God works in mysterious ways, that our minds are too limited to comprehend, and that we are not privy to His plans for mankind.

So how does one fathom the meaning or purpose, for instance, of the twenty-two year old, just out of college, highly regarded by all who knew him who dies in a crash because he got into a car driven by a drunk friend?

I can’t.

For the loved ones of that twenty-two year old, they trust in their faith and remain true to their beliefs or they conclude that they’ve been misled.  The caring, loving God they envisioned does not exist.  Maybe human nature and the love we all need are life’s only constants.  Perhaps that is all we truly need to know.