This weekend we went to Lake Hughes for a two day church retreat and I had the opportunity to try my hand at top-roped rock climbing. As you can see from this headless pic of my backside this activity isn’t one of my stronger suits. But it turned out to be a powerful application of the teaching we were getting from speaker Mike Flynn.
Flynn’s take on Faith is roughly similar to Augustine’s “Crede, ut intelligas” –that belief and faith are necessary to arrive at proper understanding. From our rationalist point-of-view we have it the other way around: first you must understand something, then you can put your faith in it.
Rock climbing turns out to be very Augustinian. Faced with a limestone escarpment and nary a handhold bigger than the grit on a sheet of super-coarse carborundum, you soon realize that faith is more important than certainty. The technique was explained to me like this…get a footing. Put your weight on the footing and move upward. Maybe then you’ll see another footing.
This is the sort of faith that the man called Jesus vigorously encouraged in his followers: do not be fooled by appearances. Move ahead. Press upward, even in the absence of certainty.
