Solution Found!

 One of my original purposes in starting a blog was to share with others ideas that have impressed me from my reading.  Sometimes writers seem to have found exactly the right words to describe what is often experienced but difficult to put into words.  When I find such a passage, it seems selfish for me to cherish it without sharing it with others.

Recently, I stumbled upon such a passage from Gordon Allport's The Individual and His Religion.  Allport was a leading 20th-century psychologist who was one of the founding figures of personality psychology.  He was an eminent student of individuals and their religion, focusing primarily not on doctrine but on experience.  In the following passage, he explains what he had found about faith:

Although I have no conclusive evidence on the point, I that the most commonly accepted type of verification is some form of immediate experience, convincing to oneself though not as a rule to others. It is religion's peculiar secret that it brings to the indiviudal a solemn assurance unlike anything else in life, a tranquility, an ever-present help in trouble, that makes next steps easier no matter what mesh of circumstances may entangle the life. 

A person who finds that the practice of faith has brought a genuine solution of conflict is convinced, for to discover order and felicity where there were chaos and distress is to find something extraordinarily real.  This experience of a "solution found" is often attended by some degree of mystical perception.  One feels that one has reached out a hand and received an answering clasp.  One has sent up a cry and heard a response.  Whoever verifies his faith in this manner has evidence no less convincing to him than the sensory perception which validates his beliefs in the world around him. Immediacy of this sort persuades him that revelation comes from God to man.  In passing, it may be remarked that what has been called "functional revelation" seems to be more common than is "cognitive revelation."  That is to say, apparently more people report an access of strength and power than claim clarifying knowledge.

I think Allport's analysis might describe all of revelation from the first book of the Bible forward.  First the world was in upheaval, chaos, without form -- and then, Light, order, harmony -- the elements working together to form a peaceful environment: "And God saw that it was very good."  Solution Found!  

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph; Moses, Joshua, the Judges, the Prophets --- all faced bewilderment and consternation.  But God entered into the midst of the evil and led them to a "Promised Land" of peace, a land "flowing with milk and honey," a land where men lived in harmony with one another and with nature itself.  Those who would not accept the Spirit of light and truth continued to instill disorder and chaos.  Finally, God sent His only Son, His very Presence, into the chaos to overcome it by a "new creation" -- His resurrection.  

There is an overcoming of evil, of chaos, of confusion, of fear, of distrust, of anger --- within ourselves and within the world around us.  It is given to us in the Presence of the Son of God.  Those who have experienced for themselves the peace He gives know "Solution Found!"  The woman at the well, the woman with a hemorrhage, the ruler whose daughter had died, the tax collector hated by Jews and Romans alike ---- solution found!   The problem of evil men overcoming the good -- solution found!

The mystery of death and of suffering -- solution found!  Because we have reached out in pain and found an answering clasp, we believe, we know that God is with us!