Wednesday, July 20, 2011

A Helpful Allegory

Peter Kreeft cited this Chinese proverb about faith so I thought I would share it since it helped me visualize the process and place of faith in daily life. I, like him, will be paraphrasing.

Imagine three people walking on top of a wall in this order: Fact, Faith and Feeling. As long as Fact is leading, Faith and Feeling will not fall off of the wall because Faith will be looking at Fact and Feeling will be looking at Faith. But as soon as Faith turns around to look at Feeling, Faith and Feeling will fall with Fact walking on despite their spill.

Perhaps something that the parable misses is if Fact is not Fact but "fact". For if Fact is wrong, then what? At some point all three would be ruined. Facts are important, to understate the fact. And to make matters more difficult, facts are manipulated, watered-down, ignored or regarded as irrelevant. As can be proved by basic human knowledge, I believe that facts run into Fact sometime or another and distill themselves into knowable Fact.




(Fact is a funny word, huh?)

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