There is the world, and then there is the world of appearances. Sometimes I think what "faith" is, in general, is the denial that these two are the same.
What the world of appearances offers us is typically not very encouraging. I may have escaped slavery, war, poverty, hunger, grinding labor, loneliness, or the tedium that often accompanies material satisfactions, but I will never escape the constant dangers of catastrophic accidents, the misery of illness, or the inevitability of death. Plus the fact that I can only see what's in front of my eyes, or know what my feeble mind is capable of grasping.
What the world of appearances offers us is a brief flash of life, light, and intelligence -- just a nanosecond in an infinity of darkness -- and that is all. There is a bleak pointlessness to it that overwhelms all of our little hopes, tragedies, and achievements. Some people are comfortable with this, or at least say they are. I am not. It scares me. It saddens me.
Thus, the world of appearances. My primal faith is that the world is not "really" this way. In fact, I refuse to accept that it is. I deny it. The world of appearances is so discordant, so out of harmony with everything instinctive to the human spirit, that it simply cannot be the final word about the way things really are.
This primal faith, this denial, goes out into the world and searches for something to justify it. For the Christian, that something is the simple/bold/crazy/amazing declaration, Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
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