Faith is the ability to believe what is absolutely true
Hope is the ability to anticipate what is absolutely good
Love is the ability to value what is absolutely beautiful

[Read More] for the backstory on why I’m writing this at 3:30 AM.

Update: Perhaps the following would be more accurate.

Faith is the ability to believe complex truth
Hope is the ability to anticipate complex good
Love is the ability to value complex beauty

Last night I had to change two smoke-alarm batteries, one at midnight the other at 3:30 AM. We have this wonderful modern versions which ‘chirp’ when their batteries are low. A marvelous safety feature, though it would be even better if coupled to alight sensor so they’d warn you the day before. 🙂

Anyway, after all this talk of prayer I wondered why I didn’t have faith for the batteries to recharge themselves. I realized that it only made sense to have faith in something that is true.

I paused, stunned. Is that all faith is? The ability to believe what is true? Which, in a complex work, is a lot harder that it may sound.

The tricky part, of course, is that truth (like all value) is complex. In yesterday’s terms, that which is spiritually true is ‘imaginary’ until in manifests in the ‘real.’ We need to have faith in the ‘absolute value’ of items, not jut their real component.

This idea of apprehending absolutes seems generalizable. as described in the abstract. We’ll see if this still seems profound at 3:30 PM.