The right questions

Tuesday 4 January 2005 1:14 AM

I'm humbled by Jason Foster's (Letters, 4/1) appellation that I have trumped even the likes of Barny Zwartz and Gordon Cheng in the defense of blind, baseless and purposeless faith. Don't thank me, thank ... No, never mind. What Mr Foster and many others have not detected in the course of this discussion of life's biggest mysteries, is that real faith has never finally rested on the best or worst of rational deduction. Centuries of suffering through disasters of all kinds have fuelled rather than dampened Christian conviction, and grown rather than weakened the Church. Why would that change now? In all likelihood, the latest disaster will lead to more rather than fewer people putting all their hope in Jesus Christ. Why? Well that's the right question to ask, isn't it. For a deity whose existence is said to be on the line, God has managed rather well in hogging the pages of a secular paper for a week. A miracle, surely!