Have you ever noticed the tremendous disparity of point of view between those possess the Divine Faith and those who have it not?  Have you ever observed when discussing important subjects, such as pain, sorrow, sin, death, marriage, children, education, that the point of view of faith is now poles apart from what is called the modern view?

It was not so many years ago that those who rejected many Christian truths were considered off the reservation; for example, the divorced who remarried, the atheists, the enemies of the family, and so forth. But today it is those with faith who are considered off the reservation. It is the others who are on it.

Why this difference in point of view between those who have faith, and those who have it not? It is due to the fact that a soul in the state of grace has its intellect illumined, which enables it to perceive new truths beyond reason.

You have exactly the same eyes at night as you have in the day, but you cannot see at night, because you lack the additional light of the sun. So too, let two minds with identically the same education and the same mental capacities look on a Host enthroned on an altar. The one sees bread, the other sees Christ - not, of course, with the eyes of the flesh, but with the eyes of faith. Let them both look on death: one sees the end of a biological entity, the other an immortal creature being judges by God on how it used its freedom. The reason for the difference is: One has a light which the other lacks, namely, the light of faith.

What then is faith? Faith is not believing that something will happen, nor is it the acceptance of what is contrary to reason, nor is it an intellectual recognition which a man might give to something he does not understand or which his reason cannot prove, for example, relativity. Rather, faith is the acceptance of a truth on the authority of God revealing. Assisted by the grace of God, we believe as true of these things is clearly evident from reason alone, but because of the authority of God, who cannot deceive nor be deceived.

You believe not because of the arguments; they were only a necessary preliminary. You believe because God said it. The torch now burns by its own brilliance.

Would you like to know four things which faith will do for you?

1. - It will perfect your reason. Faith is your reason which a telescope is to your eye. It opens vaster fields of vision and new worlds, which before were hidden and unknown. As reason is the perfection of the senses, so faith is the perfection of reason. (Incidentally, reason alone will not get us out of the mess we are in today, because reason unaided cannot function well enough to handle the problems created by sin, by loss of faith, and by misuse of reason.)

Faith is not a dam which prevents the flow of the river of thought; it is a levee which prevents unreason from overflowing the countryside of sanity. Faith will enlarge your knowledge, because there are so many truths beyond the power of reason. You can tell something of the skill, the power, the technique of an artist by looking at his painting, but you could never know his inmost thoughts unless he revealed them to you. In a like manner, you can know something of the Power and Wisdom of God by looking at His universe, but you could never know His Thoughts unless He told you. And the telling of the inner life is Revelation, which we know by faith.

Without faith many minds are like flattened Japanese lanterns, a riot of colour without pattern or purpose, a conglomeration of bits of information, but with no unifying philosophy of life. What a candle on the inside of the lantern will do to its pattern, that faith will do for your reason, that is, converge all your different pieces of knowledge into one absorbing philosophy of life which leads to God. That incidentally is why faith does not necessarily require an education. Faith is an education. God is our Teacher. That is why a little child in the first grade who knows God made him and that he is made for God is far wiser than a university professor who can explain an atom, but does not know why he is here or where he is going.

Unless you know why you are living, there is not much purpose in living.

2. - Faith will perfect your freedom. Our Divine Lord said: "...truth shall make you free." - John 8:32 - If you know the truth about an airplane, you are free to fly it; if you know the truth about a triangle, that it has three sides, you are free to draw it. Try to be "broad-minded" and give a square five sides instead of four, as they did in the Dark Ages, and see where you end. Turning the words of Our Lord around, they mean that if you do not know the truth you will be enslaved. That is why, as the world denies Absolute Truth and Righteousness, it becomes enslaved. Socialism, for example, is nothing but the compulsory organization of a chaos by the repudiation of Truth and Morality. Never, therefore, believe that you lose your freedom by accepting the Faith.

A few years ago, I received a letter from a radio listener who said: "I imagine that you from your earliest youth were surrounded by priests and nuns who never permitted you to think for yourself. Why not throw off the yoke of Rome and begin to be free."

I answered him thus: "In the centre of a sea was an island on which children played and danced and sang. Around that island were great high walls which had stood for centuries. One day some strange
men came to the island in individual row boats, and said to the children: 'Who put up those walls? Can you not see that they are destroying you freedom? Tear them down!' The children tore them down! Now if you go there, you will find all the children huddled together in the centre of the island, afraid to play, afraid to sing, afraid to dance - afraid of falling into the sea."

Oh! how right was Our Lord. It is the truth that makes us free.

3.- Faith assures equality to all men as children of God. Have you not noticed, if you have worked for or with a person of deep faith in Christ, that you have always been treated with gentleness, equality, and charity? You cannot point to a single person who truly loves God who is mean to his fellow man. A man who does not believe in God will soon cease to believe in man.

In vain will the world for equality until it has seen men through the eyes of faith. Faith teaches that all men, however poor, or ignorant, or crippled, however maimed, ugly, or degraded they may be, all bear within themselves the image of God, and have been bought by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. As this truth is forgotten, men are valued only because of what they can do, not because of what they are. And since men cannot do things equally well - for example, play violins, fly planes, teach philosophy, or stoke an engine - they are and must remain forever unequal. From the Christian point of view, all may not have the same right to do certain jobs, because they lack the capacity - but all men have the right to a decent, purposeful, and comfortable life in the structure of the community for which God has fitted them, and first and foremost of all, because of what they are: persons made to the image and likeness of God.

The false idea of the superiority of certain races and classes is due to the forgetfulness of the spiritual foundations of equality. We of the Western world have been rightly proud of the fact that we have a civilization superior to others. But we have given the wrong reason for that superiority. We assume that we are superiority because we are white. We are not. We are superiority because we are Christian. The moment we cease to be Christian we will revert to the barbarism from which we came. In like manner, if the black and brown and yellow races of the world become converted to Christ, they will produce a civilization and culture which will surpass ours if we forget Him who truly made us great. It is conceivable, if we could project ourselves a thousand years in the future, and then look back in retrospect over those thousand years, that we might see in China the record of a Christian civilization which would make us forget Notre Dame and Chartres.

4. - Finally, faith will give you peace of soul. In the multitudinous duties of modern life you will do nothing which you cannot offer to God as a prayer; your sense of values will change; you will think less of what you can store away, and more about what you can take with you when you die; your rebellious moods will give way to resignation; your tendency to discouragement, which is due to pride, will become an additional reason for throwing yourself, like a wounded child, into the Father's loving arms; you will think of God's love as an unalterable dedication to goodness, to which you submit even when it hurts.

If you are sick you will see Christ's pierced hand laid upon you, and offer your sickness for your own sins and the sins of the world.

If your heart has been broken by infidelity, you will unite your loneliness with the Master who was deserted by His disciples who walked with Him no more.

If you are the victim of another's sin, then like the young woman who wrote me, the tragedy will be suffered through life for the redemption of the one who caused her ruin.

If your son is away in service, you will follow him, not by letter alone, but by prayer, as you both find a common centre in God.

If you lost your boy in war, then you who spared not a son to save a world from tyranny, will be solaced by the Heavenly Father who spared not His Son to redeem a world from sin.

Faith will not explain why these tragedies happen, for if it did where would be room for the merit of faith? But it does give you the insight and strength to bear them. Anything in life can be borne if there is someone you love. The reason we are at war is because there are not enough people in love - with God.

                                                                  Page 1
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.

By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -