FROM THE MANUSCRIPT
In the author’s words
A person looks at the world and realizes that faith is not as simple as they were taught. The child born in one country inherits one sacred story. The child born elsewhere inherits another. Each may pray with sincerity. Each may love their family, fear death, seek forgiveness, suffer guilt, practice devotion, and believe with their whole heart that they have been given the final truth. Neither child chose the first language of God they received. Neither chose the sacred architecture into which their soul was placed. Their beliefs arrived through parents, geography, history, conquest, memory, scripture, community, fear, longing, and love. This does not make belief meaningless. It makes certainty more fragile than most people want to admit. The central wound of religion is not that human beings believe. Belief may be one of the most human things about us. The wound is that human beings often forget how much of belief passes through human hands before it reaches the soul. Revelation becomes language. Language becomes doctrine. Doctrine becomes institution. Institution becomes identity. Identity becomes defense. Defense becomes certainty. And certainty, when it loses humility, can begin to resemble possession more than faith. Faith without illusion begins where possession ends.
Faith Without Illusion, manuscript p. 508. Transcribed from the supplied manuscript; line breaks normalized.
The definition above is an editorial summary of this chapter, not a separately named theory or a claim of scientific proof.