Faith and Taxes

Notes about the self : III

Several weeks back there was a sudden and violent storm in my area and it knocked down a tree over the photo studio outlet. It looked awful and I thought it totally inappropriate for an outlet that does comely and sweet memories of people at their best to be in that position of being ugly in damage.

 

In the past week there's been a sudden and unexplained chaos with the internet service in the area that's affected every WIFI providing cafe that I go to. The photo studio, no doubt experienced a whim of nature that we sometimes translate as God's will. But the internet service?

 

We hear complaints about websites constantly and WC is no exception. Here's an invention created by man. By all accounts it ought to function exactly the way it is programmed. But computers do crash suddenly and servers go on the blink once in a while. God or man?

 

In the experience of the loss of faith, as man, we figure we have become unworthy of God, that we have been outcast. In turn we attempt to improve the quality of the man. We do it in many different ways. In time we come to place such a faith of reliance on the advancements by man that it seems as if we may have regained our faith in ourselves.

 

It appears therefore that faith as an instrument of the human condition creates a reliance only on something that is perceived as completely true always. It applies both to God and man. In this we come to a curious understanding about faith and reliability.

 

If a man cannot live up to a full and reliable faith, are we being rational in supposing that someone else, a God, should be able to do so? Karl Marx referred to the experience of God as the ' opiate of the masses.' It points to the need for man to believe that there is something infalliable and it exists in some place we are not quite sure where.

 

The story of man is the story of such a search. It comes to us in many ways, forms and stories. In doing so, day after day, life after life, it dawns on us that such is what it is trying to say. We are the faith. The expression ' if you believe it then it is true,' refers to such a clasp of palms.

 

Indic practices exalt Vishnu, as the preserver, for the man of faith and Siva the destroyer for the man without any. In creating such a pantheon the Indic believes he is always in the hands of God.