January 12, 2026. A Reasoned Faith. (Part 1).

A skeptic by nature, I’m often asking myself why I subscribe to a faith that, at times, seems so implausible. These questions, I think, are pretty healthy for anyone earnestly seeking the truth about the brief existence we have on a rather small piece of real estate in the universe. Who am I? How did I get here? And… why?

Despite being labeled “Part 1” I have no grand intentions of laying out any sort of comprehensive argument here. The “Part 1” simply acknowledges that my thoughts, my doubts, and my faith will likely continue to grow and mature over the years, and that this is but the first of many reflections on the issue.

Today I’ve been thinking a lot about society’s insistence on choosing between faith and science, as if the co-existence of the two is unfathomable. The way in which science answers the “why” of our reality seems to be quite entirely different from the way in which faith answers those same questions. Both are beautiful, both are genuine – they need not require mutual exclusion. Science shows us mechanisms and rules by which our reality operates. It is pure and honest and endlessly fascinating. It explains the “why” of our observable universe through the lens of “how.” Why is the sky blue? Why did the apple fall to the ground? But it is not necessarily designed to answer questions of meaning or purpose. It doesn’t look beyond what it knows, beyond the governing principles deduced from the observable universe. It’s own rules of objectivity necessitate its separation from any conjecture beyond the empiric rules of this reality, in the same way that characters in a video game may not fathom a world that is free from its programmed code. Yet science, too, grows and changes as knowledge is accrued, as complexities and confounders add layers and layers to the depth of our understanding.

Faith, on the other hand, deals in our relationship to that which lies beyond. It answers a very different sort of why. If asked how a crib came to be, science would show us the assembly instructions (with every nut and bolt serving structure and function), and faith would show us loving parents working well into the night, attempting to comprehend the perverse incoherence of almost all assembly instructions. If asked from whence a melody came, science would point to the three eighth notes and a held half-note scribbled on five ledger lines in the key of C minor. Faith would tell us about a young German composer giving voice to the grief of his inexorable loss of hearing. It is simplistic to insist that reality be contained in only one of these perspectives. But faith, admittedly, asks us to trust in something unseen, as if Bowser (from the Mario Brothers video game) was asked to believe in a Programmer from a distant reality – one far richer and truer than the two-bit pixels of his digital surroundings.

I would just take a slight detour to note that neither discipline fares terribly well when it is stretched to the others’ domain. I do not think science is adequate to tell us the meaning of life. It just tells us what is. Similarly, the sacred texts of my faith are not meant to be textbooks on particle physics or physiology. And while I do believe that the handiwork of God can be seen and appreciated in glorious wonder, I’m not sure whether the language of praise is intended as didactic instruction on, for example, the age of this planet. That whole argument feels, to me, as quite beside the point. Yet perhaps this is where the insistence of the dichotomy is born – in the senseless arguments that you cannot believe in both God and science, or in both an Author and his ink. Here I will acknowledge that as a lay person, I can not possibly speak for all who share my faith. I will simply note that very literal interpretations of Biblical poetry have not all aged well, nor do they change the fundamentals of my creed. But that is, perhaps, a topic for another day.

January 4, 2026. Resolutions.

I didn’t exactly expect to find myself blogging (again) but here I am, nearly 20 years after Xanga fizzled out, making new resolutions to carve out time to reflect on life, faith, doubt, and scripture. I know it’s rather silly to think that anyone would find these posts to be anything but the ramblings of one lost traveler to another, but the good Lord works in mysterious ways. In the same way that great music often transcends the limitations of the performers, perhaps my fumbling footsteps will somehow take us somewhere with a clearer view of truth and beauty, near and far.