To believe in reason is not to believe at all. God exists not to resolve intellectual dilemmas, but to help us in crises , that is, in predicaments to which no rational solution is apparent. If reason could prevail, there would be no crisis, and therefore no need for faith. Science and technology have provided means to reinterpret crises involving natural phenomena like disease and earthquakes, but the fundamental model of crisis is human, not natural, and after all the rational solutions have been exhausted and the threat of violence still looms, we need belief, not reason. But this column is not really about religion, but about love .
Love is a form of faith.
It is no coincidence that the word love , taken by itself, is assumed to refer to its most exalted form. Parents' love for their children probably absorbs ten times as much energy as the romantic love we hear so much about, but we take our definition from the latter, not the former. It is more absurd to love another with whom one has at first no family ties than to love those who share one's genetic heritage. Romantic love has its social and biological functions, but it makes these functions dependent on its leap of faith . Thus the truest love is not between persons whom everyone sees as ideally suited to each other.