Is Faith True Knowledge—Can I really know that God exists?


By Michael Ketterhagen 

Mary taught me about the difference between knowing something based on faith and knowing something based on one’s experience.

I was doing some gardening this weekend and pulling some of the grass that popped through the straw which covered most of our gardening spaces.  I had put the straw over the ground this past fall to see if the ground cover could improve the quality of the soil.  This Spring, lots of little shoots of grass popped through the straw.  The little shoots of grass were scattered all over the straw-covered gardens.  I thought that the straw I used had been peppered with many stray oat seeds.   

It looked like young oats to me and not quack grass, even though it had quack grass appearance.  I even pulled some of it out and it pulled up easily with no quack grass runners attached to any of the roots.

I told Mary that I thought it was oats, not quack grass.  She looked at me as though I was not telling the truth.  She knows how I hate to dig up the quack grass, even though that is the only way to stop its invasion of the gardens.  I asked her, “Don’t you believe me?”  She said, “Yes, I do and I don’t.”

I immediately understood what she was saying, and I said to her, “As someone you love and trust you believe what I’m saying and you still have doubt about what I’m saying because you haven’t experienced what I experienced.”   She said “Yes.”