What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern SoulSwain, Richard La Rue
Religion
What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern Soul
Swain, Richard La Rue
Christianity; God (Christianity)
duties without the conscious help of God, that is no reason why he
should run away from his Father and treat Him with silent contempt. The
Father desires the company of His son, and in a thousand ways great and
small needs His son's help.
b. Because the average Christian cannot answer technical questions
Others regard the religious verities lightly because the average
Christian cannot answer technical questions pertaining to his faith. Yet
there is not one cultivated person in a thousand that can answer
technical questions concerning the material universe in which we all
live. The most highly civilized and prosperous community succeeds simply
because it relies on the technical knowledge of the few. Most of us
know electricity neither practically nor theoretically. Even among
practical electricians, how many could answer more than the simplest
questions? It requires no profound knowledge of the subject to wire a
house and give its occupants light and comfort. Yet the practical
electrician knows as well as the expert that he is dealing with a real
force, and may be able to wire the house better than the theoretical
electrician himself could do. How many good cooks are there who could
chemically analyze the food which they have prepared for their families?
It is absurd to expect the average Christian to go into all the
psychology and philosophy of his religion; as it is absurd to deny the
reality of his experience because a full analysis is not forthcoming.
The large majority of people have neither time nor qualifications to go
into an exhaustive and technical examination of the philosophy and
science of religion, any more than they have to go into the philosophy
and science of the material world. Fortunately, a more practical way
stands wide open to them. Because men are men, they may possess the
great realities before they can adequately explain them. They know the
stars before they are astronomers. They have an implicit knowledge of
God which under right conditions becomes explicit. They have intuitions
and common sense, the foundation of all knowledge. It is their
privilege, likewise, to put things to the severe test of use. In the
material world men risk their lives and fortunes on the truth of
sciences of which, at first hand, they are totally ignorant. But by so
doing they find themselves the richer and the wiser. Likewise, the
Christian multitudes who take the spiritual world practically, find
themselves the recipients of untold blessings. Their knowledge, to be
sure, is only practical, but it is their knowledge, and they would be
willing to die for it if necessary. One may have the reality without the
analysis, or he may have the analysis without the reality, or,
unfortunately, he may have neither. The happiest possible situation is
where he has both. A man may be justified in giving money and labor for
the support and extension of religion without himself being a
psychologist or a theologian. Just as the men who have given the most
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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