Our lives, our world, and our universe are all defined by boundaries. More importantly, the boundaries of our knowledge, prevent us from comprehending the spectrum of our existence. Despite the best efforts of our scientific community, we are incapable of grasping many of the mysteries that define our existence, including, the greatest mystery of all – the existence of God and life after death.
The greatest boundary is the limits imposed by our human experience. We struggle to grasp concepts that lie so far outside human experience that we have no way to describe them. Science attempts to understand many of these ideas by means of mathematics, which seems to be the only language that even approaches a path to human understanding. Unfortunately, those mathematical explanations are equally incomprehensible to all but the elite of the scientific community.
Science would describe the distance to another star in terms of “light years” – the distance traveled in a year’s time at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). While it may be convenient to have a mathematical model to reference, it does little to help those of us who struggle to visualize a single mile without the help of a highway sign to the next exit, or judge whether or not that 10 X 12 rug will fit in our living room.
Lacking a point of reference, we “take it on faith,” that those numbers are accurate, and we don’t even try to visualize what they mean. Likewise, when we see a photo of a distant galaxy, and see the thousands of pinpoints of light that illustrate tens of thousand of stars, can’t truly comprehend the vastness of space and the number of stars and planets that reside there. Pick a number, and just keep adding zeros.
When it comes to having faith that God exists, and that He is responsible for all we observe and experience, the same formula applies. Such a concept is wildly beyond our ability to grasp, so we have little choice but to take it on faith. We are handicapped by the limits of our human experience.
We do, however, have evidence.
While not endorsed by any religious organization, there are numerous reports from people who claim to have suffered death, yet returned to life after a brief stop on the other side of death’s door. Most report that they experienced a feeling of unconditional love. Many report that they no longer fear death now that they know for a certainty what lies beyond. The clincher in these stories is those who report observing activities of others – even others in separate rooms – while they were technically dead.
Most importantly, many reveal that, in the moments of their visit to the other side, they were overwhelmed to realize that they understood everything that was hidden before. That understanding was instinctual rather than the result of exposure and analysis. For that brief moment, the boundaries imposed by human limitations, those outer limits, were vanquished.
It could be said that faith is a shortcut to understanding the mysteries of our existence. In effect, it means accepting that we don’t need to know intellectually. We need only to trust, and in trusting, it all makes sense.