Humans are wondrous creatures. Even the very thought that we are conscious at all is enough to baffle the most intelligent of people. Yet it is even more amazing that this wondrous creature we call human, which has been mysteriously endowed with mind and reason, will voluntarily give up these faculties rather than use them. How? They give it up to have a book they can believe in that has all the answers spelled out for them. Then the attribute this book they know was written by humans, to the divine creator.

What is it that would cause someone to do such a thing?

Inevitably someone will come to the place where the entertainment of this world no longer holds their interest and the questions of life come foremost to their mind. In their sincere search for answers, they reach out and cry for meaning. And when this desire reaches to one’s very core, something happens. They can have a revelation or communications with the very essence of life itself. This, they instinctively and understandingly recognizes as God. And it is revealed to them that this God loves and has been with them always, and is not far away. Many Christians call this the new or re birth experience but it is in no way an experience that is limited to a particular religion.

From this point, an individual “knows” that they have a spirit and connection to the unknown questions of life itself. What they do from this point is most paramount in their journey. They usually experience a burning desire to know more of this phenomena and connection that resembles finding a lost treasure. They become renewed and excited in purpose to know more and live in this experience they have just had. Not having all the answers, in their impatience, they search the data of their mind. They recall teachings about a book of answers to these questions. They were taught that the author was God. They share their experience with others having had the same experience and have come to this same conclusion. Their focus is now placed on a book. In it they seek to find more examples of their experience and inevitably make a decision to accept this conclusion as a fact. And it is through this paradigm that they continue their search.

Though many things in this book neither go well with their mind nor reason, they make a decision to believe the book by a concept they are told is faith. Then they use their intellect to make it fit within that concept and they consider reason and intellect as inferior to the book itself. After all, they have made a conscious decision to believe the author is God. In essence they give up their right to doubt, question or otherwise disagree with the book in which the words reinforces their decision as being correct. They believe they are in the process of learning. Yet their learning is always made subject to the premises of the book they have made a decision to believe in. Their thinking process must always be made limited to the revelations of the book which they no longer separate from God.

To the outsider, this seems absurd, ridiculous and foolish. Yet to the believer, the book speaks of itself as foolishness to the mind and therefore justifies the mind’s belief in this newfound faith. Because of the words in the book, the believer sees others as blinded and lost. They see themselves as special, to be rewarded in a future life for their belief in this newfound faith concept. The book gives them purpose by its command to make more disciples of the book or their newfound God. They will be so daring as to refer to this book as the Word of God, as though that were the same essence of life that they connected with in the beginning. And thus starts a vicious cycle.

Reason cannot deliver them from this cycle because their decision to believe has negated its use. History, scholarship, contradictions or errors in the book have no power over their beliefs as they are trapped within the confines of the book which declares all others to be blinded. It declares the understanding of all the concepts or premises of the book to be foolishness to the natural mind and beyond its comprehension. Yet the fact that they are blinded by this belief is hidden from them.

What can be done for him? Nothing! They must make their own choices and decisions. Those on the outside can only continue in love to include them, as one on a journey, and an equal partner of God’s wondrous creation.