Nothing Conceivable is Beyond the Scope of Belief

How often is it the case that one person will say to another, "I know what you believe in" or "I know why you believe as you do" or even "I know what you believe in and I know why you believe in it"?  A proper response--at least in the eyes of polite society--might be, "My beliefs are my own, and my reasons are my own, and I do not need anyone to pronounce upon my beliefs or my motivations."

There is a certain limitation, however, to the type of response presented above, and it is especially apparent in religious contexts.  The believer believes in the existence of some divinity, and usually claims--in general terms, at least--to understand the motivation of that divinity (even if that motivation on the part of the deity is one of wishing to remain obscure in intent.)  Is it anything other than a convention about politeness, that would refuse to admit the observation that the believer pronouncing upon the existence and motivation of the divine is not qualitatively different from the critic pronouncing upon the quality and underlying motivations of the believer's beliefs?

A similar consideration would apply to the beliefs of atheists.  If the divine is held to be non-existent because the evidence does not--ostensibly--support the notion, is it not being claimed that an entity meeting some necessary criteria of divinity is wanting, or perhaps claimed that such an entity would display this or that motivation or intent, yet fails to do so?  How are such assertions by atheists about the--ostensibly--divine fundamentally different from critics pronouncing upon what atheists believe, and why they believe it?

The key to understanding this situation lies in understanding the ubiquity of belief.  Without belief there is no experience.  Again, it is a dysfunctional sort of analysis in polite society that perpetuates our misunderstanding of belief.  In this analysis, many things are set apart from discussions about belief by thinking of such things as subject to other realms.  Some things are thought irrelevant or insubstantial where beliefs are concerned, and some things--unquestionable "scientific realities" or "logical necessities," for example--are thought beyond the scope of belief.

Nothing conceivable is beyond the scope of belief.  We know that the world is round because we believe in the substantive nature of our accumulated mental furnishings.  Let us believe that all of our memories are suspect, and we will have to admit that our certainty about the shape of the world is predicated on the belief--not knowledge--that our mental outlook is solid.  And yet, in that self-same cold logic that we apply to science, we must admit--if we are willing to consider it--that all of our memories ARE suspect.  Memory can fail us, and it is only our desire and our need for certainty that allow us, in our minds, to assign certainty to some imperfectly-defined critical mass of learnings and experiences, replayed for us by our imperfect memories.

Again, nothing conceivable is beyond the scope of belief.  Failure to understand this has led to failure to understand Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of Heaven.  As I will attempt to relate, the Kingdom of Heaven is not some future state, nor is it some state of present spiritual enlightenment.  The Kingdom of Heaven is experience understood as a coherent whole subsumed--conceptually--to the phenomenon of belief.  The Kingdom of Heaven does not exist in some manner that would allow us to conceive of it, because then it would inhabit some context--at least in our thoughts--when by definition the Kingdom of Heaven must encapsulate all imaginable contexts.

This is why, for example and as we shall see, the Kingdom of Heaven is both a place for which to strive, and a place of condemnation and punishment for those who will not so strive.  The logical inconsistencies inherent in the "both" and "and" aspects of the Kingdom of Heaven are immaterial, because the Kingdom itself is immaterial to us (limited as we are in our understanding).  The Kingdom of Heaven is belief about the Kingdom of Heaven.  The Kingdom of Heaven is belief in the Kingdom of Heaven.