Dynamics of Faith (Perennial Classics)

there's a particular philosopher who's a Protestant philosopher whose name is paul tillic and required reading in junior year at my high school was a book that he wrote called the dynamics of faith and if somebody were to ask me what's the book that had has had the most impact on you in your life i would say that book now this is a Protestant philosopher who's arguing for belief in god and i don't believe in god i'm an atheist but um uh but uh why did this have such a big impact on me because he talks about something called existential disappointment and this is a really big piece of this book the dynamics of faith essentially saying what you you said and this is why it had such an impact on me that what people will do is they'll strive for the finite right like i want to sell a million copies or i want to make a million dollars or things like this where this is a goal that you can attain within your lifetime and he says that what ends up happening is that you sort of uh pin your ability to be happy on the achievement of that goal as opposed to on the things that would actually make you happy what are the features of you as a human being and your interaction with the world and the things that you're sort of striving for that would help you to achieve happiness and he points out that what happens is that when people achieve those goals i made a million dollars i sold a million copies um that they tend to go into very deep depressions right afterwards you see this actually the weight of gold is a good example of this like what happens when you win the gold and then what what do you do afterwards right i'm the same person i was the day before than the day after and i thought this was going to fulfill me and it was going to create the happiness that i haven't created for myself yet and of course it doesn't and then you're sad now he uses this as an argument for believing in god because he says that a striving to um you know striving toward god who is infinite is going to solve this problem but what i took from that is that there's all sorts of ways that you can create infinite goals for yourself right you can say like i want to i want to every day i want to be a little bit better than the day that i was you know that i was before i want to try to be uh the best parent that i can now that's a goal that i can never it isn't finite i can't ever reach it i want i want to try to write in a way that's going to create the most impact in the world given what i'm capable of right now you've taken it from the finite into something that is more infinite and i think it creates a lot more happiness so it's weird i read this little book called the dynamics of faith which was you know trying to argue for belief in god and i took from it so much that this has been the single most impactful book that i've ever read in my life