We stub our toe and it engulfs our feeling. We run too far and we find ourselves gasping. We forget our suit-case has wheels and we pause in our attempts to carry it. These events are transient, ephemeral, soon forgotten but we can’t ignore them. They add up to an emphasis on the physical, fingers and toes and all the organs that make us a functioning unit in its own right.
That is not the whole story about being human, of course. And St Paul pointed it out to the Corinthian Christians. Our true identity is to be found elsewhere. It is a spiritual aspect to our experience. What seems like decay is or can be the onset of renewal. Paul deals with this at some length in the fifth chapter of his second letter to Corinth.
This is a bold statement about our true identity. It invites the question ‘Who says so?’ An agnostic is on firm ground here. ’Don’t know’ cannot be faulted in argument. But, as Paul demonstrated elsewhere, ‘Don’t know’ is not a rallying cry. There is nothing of the ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends’ about it, nothing either like ‘Gentlemen, I direct your attention to Africa.’
If we believe this world is all, we shall invite a kindly raising of the eyebrows without some evidence to put before our neighbour who just doesn’t know. When our prayers are not answered and we find ourselves giving up, Paul illustrates. ‘As long as we are in the body, so long are we exiles from the Lord (2 Corinthians 5.6). ‘Faith is our guide, not sight.’
We all have faith in things we don’t understand. We entrust ourselves as travellers to a jet engine or two. We send documents by email. We plant seeds. We bask in the sunshine (not too much, we hope). We shall soon be trusting driverless cars.
We all have faith. The important thing is to direct it.
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