| Would you ever renounce your faith? |
I think we will eventually be able to renounce our faith in order for it to be superseded by knowledge.
Religious faith is presently only “faith” from the point of view of the intellect. From the point of view of one’s heart, (i.e. at the deeper level of one’s consciousness), religious conviction can be a lot more than faith. Significantly, when Jesus taught the people of his day, he addressed them as God’s “children”. He also taught that the Truth can be found through nothing more than a “child-like faith”. Jesus knew that these people weren’t ready to accept the truths he conveyed from a purely intellectual point of view. They had to rely on faith, because they were still only children, spiritually speaking. The so-called ‘mature, adult intellect’, which the world perceives as wise, could not understand Christ’s teachings, and people who were attuned with the intellect alone, i.e. divorced from spiritual wisdom, often mocked Christ's teachings. (This is still the case today, of course.)
But naturally, children grow up. And significantly, Jesus also taught that we shall “
know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
Speaking in terms of humanity’s spiritual growth as a whole, I believe that there will come a time when Christians will be able to shed their ‘faith-consciousness’, in order to make way for ‘intuition-consciousness’, which I think is the stage many Christians are presently at. As humanity evolves, (i.e. grows up), intuition will in turn eventually be superseded by knowledge, and we shall
know that the Christian Good News is actually true.
This does not necessarily imply that God’s existence - and our purpose on earth - will one day be proved by materialistic science. Rather, it implies that our
spiritual awareness will rise and blossom to such a degree that the crude methods of materialistic science alone will be transcended, (not necessarily refuted – just transcended), and the “seeds of God”, which reside within us (1 John 3.9), will have grown and blossomed to such a level in humanity’s consciousness that our mortal intellect will
know the Truth of God. Then, only the spiritually immature – or the fool – will claim that there is no God.
Naturally, as children grow up, they become more like the “image and likeness” of their parents. Regarding humanity, this obviously holds deep implications. (“Is it not written, ‘Ye are Gods’?”, said Jesus, referring to Psalm 82.6.)
I think St. Paul hit the nail on the head in 1 Corinthians 13.12, when he wrote: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
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