What is faith? What must...
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What is faith? What must you believe to be saved? Peter DeVries wrestles with this in the story, The Blood of the Lamb. In one scene he has the main character talking with a doctor.
"I set my brandy down and said: 'Dr. Simpson, do you believe in a God?'"
"He just perceptibly raised his eyes, as if in entreaty to Heaven to spare him at least this. It took me some years to attain his mood and understand my blunder. He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and the slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of youth for answers the appearance of boredom. Dr. Simpson looked bored as he ground his teeth and gazed away."
"Oh, one man's opinion about these things is as good as another's," he said. "You believe what you must in order to stave off the conviction that it's all a tale told by an idiot."
"I set my brandy down and said: 'Dr. Simpson, do you believe in a God?'"
"He just perceptibly raised his eyes, as if in entreaty to Heaven to spare him at least this. It took me some years to attain his mood and understand my blunder. He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and the slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of youth for answers the appearance of boredom. Dr. Simpson looked bored as he ground his teeth and gazed away."
"Oh, one man's opinion about these things is as good as another's," he said. "You believe what you must in order to stave off the conviction that it's all a tale told by an idiot."
