FAITH, HOPE AND INTELLIGENCE

        There is a constant war going on between faith, hope and intelligence, at very many points in life. 

        When my son was a boy of 3 or 4 years, I had to leave him at his Grandparents’ house for some family function.  They lived at Guruvayur then and my Father-in-law worked in a Bank there.  On the evening before I left them there, I was going around the stalls around the Temple.  Seeing the crowd, I told my son to be careful when coming to the place with his grandparents or mother and that he should not go astray in the crowd. (I remember that I was myself said to be notorious at slipping away at unguarded moments and as a result my parents had to suffer a lot to search and get me from various crowded areas).  ‘Even if you get lost somewhere’, I told him, ‘remember to inform them regarding your grandfather’s name and bank name, because no one will know my name or address here’.

          He looked up at my face and asked, “But will not God take care of children?”.  I was stunned for an answer. Was it his faith or hope?

          He was too young to be taught that one should pray and yet not forget to tie the camel. Too early for such intelligence to be attained either.

         This reminded me of an instance which Sr. Stella, one of the resource persons, told us at a youth camp at Divyodaya, Coimbatore, when I was in my college.  She recounted that a small child used to freely wander about in a hospital, all alone.  When he was asked whether he was not afraid, the child promptly said, ‘why should I? My father is there’.  His father was a bedridden man, with both legs amputated. This was faith and hope foiled into one.

       Faith has been best described in the story of the disciple who walked over a river at the command of his guru, though the guru himself did not succeed. The disciple had implicit faith in his guru but the guru doubted himself.

         But the realised ones are able to see the God in all living beings.  It is not their faith or hope.  It is their knowledge.  That is superior intelligence.  That person who commanded, ‘keep my legs wherever you feel there is no God,’ is an example of such a realised one. For them you and I and He are all the same.

       When vacillating between faith, hope and doubt, it is the intelligence to seek the truth that can alone prevail.  The eternal search for that intelligence alone could sustain faith and hope.  True knowledge can be derived only from that intelligence.  To abandon the path will be therefore as disastrous as not having any faith at all.

     One may not have faith in ‘a’ God, not in morality, not in karma, not in man-made laws. But even to say that, one definitely has a faith in himself.  That is the point where all searches ultimately converge at - to know the source of that ‘Self’.  Till then the search has to continue, by whatever means.  That is the road from faith to intelligence, through hope.  Though the three may look different, they are integral parts of the whole. 

     It is a combination of these factors perhaps that Christ prescribed regarding, ‘how to survive as a sheep among wolves’ – ‘be wise as serpents and innocent as doves’. (Mathew 10:16)