Reading the lives of the saints often raises our expectations, we read of someone transfigured with light, or someone who is present in two places at once, we read beautiful descriptions of the inner life of an awareness of our union with God, a clarity in regard to the nature of all things.
And in comparison our own religious experience will seem sterile, a voice crying out in the wilderness met with stony silence.<\/p>\n
For some such comparisons can lead to despair, or others these comparisons make them doubt the authenticity of saints lives and in many cases we discover what I term the Disappointment of Religion.<\/p>\n
The modern religious search often begins in disappointment, the rhetoric of \u201creligious believing\u201d and the reality can be miles apart. There can be very legitimate reasons for this disjunction. The Truth claims of many religious groups borders on the absurd, complex dogmatic constructs quickly reveal themselves to be the intellectual fabrications of cultural and psychological forces. Thus disappointment leads to disbelief.<\/p>\n