The problem of how to...
Illustration
Object:
The problem of how to have faith is common to all world religions. This insight from the
Sufi branch of Islam speaks to Christians as well as Muslims:
All that we behold and perceive by our senses bears undeniable witness to the existence of God -- the stone and the clod, the plants and the trees, the living creatures, the heavens and the earth and the stars, the dry land and the ocean, the fire and the air, substance and accident. Indeed, we ourselves are the chief witnesses to Him. But just as the bat sees only at night and cannot see in the daytime because of the weakness of its sight, which is dazzled by the full light of the sun, so also the human mind is too weak to behold the full glory of the Divine Majesty.
(From the Muslim Sufi mystic, Al-Ghazzali, in Essential Sufism, edited and copyright by James Fadiman and Robert Frager, foreword by Huston Smith [HarperSanFrancisco].)
All that we behold and perceive by our senses bears undeniable witness to the existence of God -- the stone and the clod, the plants and the trees, the living creatures, the heavens and the earth and the stars, the dry land and the ocean, the fire and the air, substance and accident. Indeed, we ourselves are the chief witnesses to Him. But just as the bat sees only at night and cannot see in the daytime because of the weakness of its sight, which is dazzled by the full light of the sun, so also the human mind is too weak to behold the full glory of the Divine Majesty.
(From the Muslim Sufi mystic, Al-Ghazzali, in Essential Sufism, edited and copyright by James Fadiman and Robert Frager, foreword by Huston Smith [HarperSanFrancisco].)
