Goines On: Evidence of things not seen

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Goines’ notion the day before, that faith itself could somehow seem to amount to evidence, kept nagging at him. He now remembered a Bible verse to that effect, the opening verse of Chapter 11 of a letter to the Hebrews in Jerusalem, thought to have been composed about 30 years after Jesus’ crucifixion: “...faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” – as though faith, or true-belief alone could transform a thing believed into a fact. The resurrection of Jesus, for example, which the letter writer seemed to think lacked other evidence. Otherwise, why the need for faith?
    Goines wondered whether the writer was also stating a psychological insight here – that some mechanism of mind, when our hope is strong enough, can persuade us that the hope will manifest? 
    Life is perilous, and every living creature is born under a death sentence, with many an act of Nature (tsunami, earthquake, hurricane, flood) and act of man (mayhem, murder, rape, and worse – slavery, war, genocide) and accidents and diseases along the way...
    Not to mention inequality of circumstance and opportunity. Some people are privileged and powerful, others disadvantaged and exploited. Among people it is much as among species of animals: some are figuratively or literally slaughtered and eaten, while others do the slaughtering and the eating.
    The victims of either chance or human abuse might naturally hope for some sort of “Last Reckoning” at which the tables would be turned, themselves to have their suffering made up for somehow, and their oppressors to be stripped of their power and wealth, and punished.
    Goines was mostly satisfied, even happy, with his own life on Earth, and he was grateful to have wanted what he had, even if he’d not always had what he wanted and was daily sad for the suffering and deaths of humans and other animals. But he acknowledged that some people were profoundly dissatisfied  and unhappy – not wanting what they had, having failed to get so many things that they wanted. He could understand their hope for heaven, their need to believe they could count on it. He had a few close blood relatives like this.
    Goines hoped – for his loved ones’ sake certainly, but for all innocent victims as well – that there was a heaven, whether he qualified to go there or not. For their sake, he was willing, if it would help, to give up the place there that was presumably reserved for him (in the event he accepted Jesus). Goines’ heart seemed to him to literally swell at the thought his life had pretty much been “heaven on Earth” and he could forgo further life elsewhere for someone who needed his spot. Anyway, after all, he believed his death would be the end of him, so it wasn’t as though he would be giving up anything.
    Goines continued for some minutes to experience a rich afterglow. He didn’t think he had ever felt more beatific.

[And tomorrow Goines continues to muse about the letter writer’s intentions.]

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