“We Live By Faith” W. Zeitler [ORGAN]
The Order of Chivalry: Justice & the Knight’s Sword W. Zeitler
In the Star Trek movie “The Wrath of Kahn”, Spock says “Logic dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few — or the one,” which becomes a significant theme of the movie. In the next movie in the series, Captain Kirk explains to Spock, “The needs of the few — or the one — outweigh the needs of the many.” This expresses a fundamental tension in society — the rights of the individual “vs.” the well being of Society in general.
Early humanity banded together into tribes because it significantly improved their odds of survival — multiple folks working together had much better odds of bringing home the brontosaurus burgers than individual folks by themselves. In doing so they gave up a certain kind of freedom — to go wherever and do whatever one pleased, and instead acquiesced to the consensus of the tribe. But in exchange for giving up one kind of freedom, folks gained other freedoms, such as freedom from starvation. And ultimately, as tribes grew even larger, folks were able to specialize and develop unique skills, improving the quality of life for everyone, as opposed to everyone having to grub for berries and bugs all day on their own. (That doesn’t sound like much fun.)
We experience this all the time in our modern world. In exchange for driving on whatever side of the road I please, I give up that ‘freedom’ and acquiesce to always driving on the right side. And so does everyone else (exceptions are so rare they make the 6 o’clock news). In exchange for giving up one kind of freedom (driving on whichever side of the road I feel like), I gain the freedom to drive across town without worrying about oncoming traffic.
The thing is, acquiescence to the ‘rules of the road’ — like always driving on the right — is voluntary. If everyone decided to ignore the rules of the road, there just aren’t enough police to arrest everyone, or jails to hold them all. Police can only work if the percentage of folks flouting the Law is very small. Even the national guard wouldn’t be enough if one morning most of us woke up and decided to flout the Law all day long.
So what makes this all work is that 1) we individually acquiesce to the Rule of Law, and 2) we trust everyone else to do the same. Yes, there are burglars and such in the world, but I’m not sure we really appreciate how small a percentage of the population that must be for Society to continue to function.
In short, we citizens have to trust each other. Of course we also trust the Justice System to address that small percentage of the population that doesn’t want to live by the rules. (And the Justice System also discourages us when we law-abiding folk might think about straying!) But for the most part, our trust in each other — our trust in most of our fellow citizens — is well founded. It works.
The Greek word in the New Testament for “faith” and “believe” is PISTIS — also translated as ‘trust’. The idea of PISTIS is not assent to some idea like “I believe in the Trinity” — which is fine, but that’s not what PISTIS is really about. PISTIS is about acting on the assumption that something is true — driving on the right side ASSUMING — TRUSTING — that everyone else will too. I trust that this bridge I’m about to drive across was properly engineered. I trust that this food I just bought is fit to eat.
It goes even further. I trust that the Laws of Physics will keep working as we move into the future. Scientists trust that this is so too. Science cannot prove that the Laws of Physics will still work 1 minute from now. That has been the case for almost 14 billion years now, so it’s a really good bet, but it’s not an absolute certainty. After all, there could be some unknown, undiscovered Law of Physics — “ha ha at 6:06 6/6 of year 2066 the Universe is Game Over!” — a law that no one knows about (yet).
In other words, PISTIS is not something confined to religion. I argue that all of sane human endeavor is riddled with it. It’s something that makes civilization and even Science possible. It makes Life itself possible — without us collapsing into a blubbering helpless pile of doubt about everything. We swim in PISTIS — Faith, and Trust! And without it Society would collapse and we would all die — literally. Fortunately, we all persevere in Faith — more than we may realize. “We live by Faith” — we all most certainly do!