Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Things Beyond Our Comprehension

 

I have been thinking a lot about people who say that if we can't see or explain something, it doesn't exist, and this strikes me as the height of hubris. Who can say that we understand everything in this world? Maybe we aren't even capable of understanding certain things. Here is an analogy:

Say I was a dog, and my master asked me to bring in the paper every day. I have no idea what could be interesting about the paper to my master, and I never will. Dogs can't learn to read. Then another dog says to me, "Why do you bring in that stupid paper for your master every day? It would be a lot more fun to tear it to shreds! Or just ignore it. Why should he make you do something so useless?" Then I would respond, "I don't know why my master wants the paper every day, but it makes him happy when I bring it to him, and I trust him. If there is something about that paper that I don't understand but he does, I accept that."

Maybe this isn't a perfect analogy, but you can see how it applies to, say, getting up and going to Mass every Sunday. People will say to me, "Why don't you just sleep in?" and honestly I could, since I'm Catholic and they have Masses at all sorts of times, but that's beside the point. Maybe to an atheist it makes no sense to go to Mass because they don't think there is anything in this world that they can't understand. I am not so sure of my own intellect as to think there aren't things beyond my comprehension, so if God says it's important to go to Mass, I do. If He says I should believe He is a Trinity, I do even if I don't really understand it. It makes Him happy, and I trust there is something there that I just don't understand, but that doesn't make it nonexistent.


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