A lot of what we will do in this class will hinge on definitions: faith, belief, religion, Christianity, understanding, church, priesthood, and even, Jesus himself. So as a means of getting the discussion started, I thought I would share a quotation from one of my favorite novels: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. I wouldn't really call it a "religious" novel. Not in the sense that we usually think of them. Jayber himself is not that "religious" in the traditional sense. But he does have faith and spends a great deal of the book working out that faith in a kind of fear and trembling, working out what it means to love and what it means to sacrifice because he loves. It's a stunningly beautiful book. Here is a window into how Jayber defines faith, which I think sets us up nicely to begin talking about "faith seeking understanding."
"But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark. Even a man of faith knows that we've all got to go through enough to kill us.... Listen. There is a light that includes our darkness, a day that shines down even on the clouds.... His belief is a kind of knowledge beyond any way of knowing. He believes that the child in the womb is not lost, nor the man whose work has come to nothing, nor is the old woman forsaken in a nursing home in California. He believes that those who make their bed in Hell are not lost, or those who dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, or the lame man at Bethedsa Pool, or Lazarus in the grave, or those who pray, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.' Have mercy." ~Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow
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