Thought for the day: responsibility for faith

Here's my quote for today: "Faith, like knowledge, is supposed to accumulate with the generations."

Here's what I mean. Faith, like scientific knowledge, is not supposed to be "started from scratch," or "reinvented" or "rediscovered" or "decided if it is 'valid' or not" generation by generation. It is what it is as God has revealed it. Humans would be insane if each generation they decided whether to drink clean or dirty water, regardless of what their parents said. They also do not leave it up to their children to discover anew with each generation what is healthy to eat and what is poisoned, how to get dressed, how to talk, how to walk. I mean, why not leave it up to each generation to 'decide' if walking and talking is 'valid' for them?

Likewise God reveals and that is IT. Each generation is supposed to pass on to their children all that they know about their faith, just as it was passed on to them. It's fine to have study guides and new access to sacred literature, and to discuss and turn to valid religious leaders for preaching and for interpretation (that's why we Catholics have the successor to St. Peter, namely the Pope). But it is not fine to leave your children to "figure out for themselves" if "religion is valid." Of course it is valid, you knuckleheads. The Bible is two thousand years of history and divine revelation that is specific and communal in origin, not what someone thought up when he or she had nothing else to do that day. It's not like the Bible exists because people wondered "why we are here" or "what does life mean." Only a dummy who has never read the Bible would think that. The Bible is a huge history, genealogy, series of revelations from God, advice from sages and priests, commandments and laws and praise and worship of God. It was not a book that was slapped together by ignorant people who wondered what life meant. It is a CHRONICLE. It documents factual history, people and revelations by God.

So it's not like people are supposed to reinvent the wheel each generation. And it's not like a discovery in science suddenly makes the Bible "unnecessary." Only dummies think that religious texts, the Torah, the Bible and the Qur'an, are written as comfort food for primitive dummies who did not have science yet.

I hope this helps to realign this weird assumption that has crept into common modern culture that somehow religion is something that kids are supposed to just stumble into, while you would (presumably) not dream of doing that when teaching your children to drink milk and not out of the toilet. Just as science is a body of specific knowledge accumulated over time, the religious texts are likewise both historical and revelatory information that was accumulated over time and needs to be passed along intact to each generation. Sorry to use hyperbole or gross imagery but I have learned to my dismay (like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock in one of the Star Trek movies) that if you don't swear or use a crude image that modern people don't pay attention or don't understand what you are saying.