A Question of Faith: In Honor of Father's Day (revisited)

by A.E. Bayne

I was prompted to consider my father’s faith last night while watching a television show about the history of gravitational theory. According to modern physicists, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity shook the faith of many in the scientific world because it disproved a portion of Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation. Einstein found that once an object is in motion, say the apple falling from the tree, Newton’s law holds up; however, if an object is sedentary, then a secondary force is needed to set that object into motion. He postulated that space itself pushes down on objects, unlike Newton’s law which suggests that gravity exerts a force that pulls things toward the most massive object in their vicinity. Einstein’s colleagues balked at his theory, as their faith was staunchly rooted in Newtonian physics. His answer to the disparity between the laws was to prove his own by providing tangible proof that space bends around massive objects. He did this by showing how light bends around the sides of the sun from the stars behind during a solar eclipse. With empirical data on his side, Einstein shifted the faith of an entire community of believers.

Like Einstein, my father was a mathematician with the keen mind of a practical observer; but he had no experiential data to prove the existence of God, a quandary that Einstein also faced in his life. My father once said that faith is the true contradiction of the universe. I came to understand that he meant that faith was part of the basic thread that made up his nature; yet it was ultimately intangible and illogical to his highly pragmatic mind. He could not tell me why he had faith, only that he did. Without proof, he could speak of the God of his faith; but he could not say unequivocally that such a God existed. He never espoused me to his faith, but I knew that he was knitted and bound by it. Nor did he ever proselytize, which made it even more of a mystery since I was being raised in my mother’s religion, Catholicism. Subsequently, he never forced me to acknowledge God or religion, but rather allowed me to experience spirituality within the realm of my Catholic upbringing. He never called his brand of teaching religion, but I realize now that what he believed was a much stronger variety of spiritual faith than that which I was being taught at school. My father and I spoke lengthily about God and faith; I just did’t realize it at the time.

It is difficult to explain how my father did end up providing me with details of his belief in the existence of God and the mystery of faith. Initially, he related the simple versions taught through bible stories and the Ten Commandments. I don’t think he wanted to contradict what I was learning of faith and God in school, and I know he didn’t want to confuse me. However, he would talk to me about ethical decisions, right and wrong, and I remember that he always asked me if I thought I was making the right decision when I was faced with a moral dilemma. I’ll admit that often I went with my desires rather than my gut instinct and got into trouble; and I can say for sure that part of that was because he didn’t stop me from making those mistakes. I do know that he had faith that I would eventually make the right decisions, just as he had faith that the universe has an ordered sequence and some reason to it.

As I grew to adulthood and my father was nearing the end of his life, he did question me about my own beliefs and the faith that I chose for myself and my son. His idea of faith was bound by the model of his youth. He had a difficult time understanding my wider view of faith, but he never told me I was wrong or degenerative for basing my faith on a variety of sources. Like the Newtonian physicists, he simply asked how my theological beliefs could be true. If I had faith, then how was it that I did not believe in the God with whom I had been raised? If a, then b must be true. Like Einstein, I attempted to show him how my faith was simply an extension of the one in which he had allowed me to be raised. If a, then b, but taking into account the added variable c. I bent the light for him, and once he understood he left me with one last phrase to guide me, “Do you think you are making the right decision?” He had faith that I was.