18 connected with the love for any other being. The affirmation of one’s own life,
happiness, growth, and freedom is rooted in ones capacity to love. Love of God is described as “the longing for the attainment of the full
capacity to love, for the realization of that which “God” stands for in oneself” 71. The thing that counts here is the act of experiencing the oneness with God.
As the religious form of love, God stands for the highest value and the most desirable good. Neither the knowledge of God in thought, nor the thought of one’s
love of God, but the act of experiencing the oneness with God that counts. In this study, two types of love will be mainly used, namely the erotic love
and the love of God. Erotic love will become the basic theory to analyze the relationship between Elijah and the widow in Akbar. Meanwhile, Love of God is
used to explain the growing faith of Elijah.
4. Theory of Faith
Related to the development of the individual, Cooke proposes that “faith brings personal fulfillment in terms of maturity and in term of faith, maturity
demands love” 20. Still, Fromm queries, “the practice of the art of loving requires the practice of faith” 102. According to him, there are two types of faith
in the world. They are rational and irrational faith 102. Rational faith is defined as a conviction which is rooted in one’s own
experience of thought or feeling. It is the character trait pervading the whole personality. It steams in the confidence in one’s power of thought observation and
judgment. Meanwhile, irrational faith is considered as the belief in a person or an
19 idea which is based on one’s submission to irrational authority. Irrational
authority here means the acceptance of something as true only because an authority or the majority says so.
Faith is the most fundamental aspect of human quest for relation to transcendence. According to Fowler, “Faith is defined as an orientation of the
total person, giving purpose and goal to one’s hopes and strivings, thoughts, and actions “14. He proposes that faith has three characteristics
a. It is fundamental so that none of us can live well for very long without it.
b. It is universal so that when we move beneath the symbols, rituals and ethical
patterns that express it, faith recognizably the same phenomenon in Christians, Marxists, Hindus, and Dinka.
c. It is infinitely varied so that each person’s faith is unique.
5. Theory of Hope
It is said that human beings are “Homo Esperans’, or Man of Hope. Definitely, the ability to hope makes human beings unique compared to any other
living creature. According to Lynch, hope is defined as The fundamental knowledge and feeling that there is a way out of
difficulty, that things can work out, that we as human persons can somehow handle and manage internal and external reality, that there are
“solutions” in the most ordinary biological and psychological sense of that word, that, above all, there are ways out of illness. 24
The keyword of this definition is a way out or solution. In general sense, it is a sense of possible. What people need is the possibility though it is not always
easy. Hope, therefore, involves three basic ideas that could not be simpler: “what I
20 hope for I do not yet have or see; it may be difficult; but I can have it – it is
possible” 24. St. Paul teaches, “We live by hope”. He wants to underline this universality of hope in all that people do and every step they take. It can be
interpreted as meaning that everything people do in life is based on the hope that will get them somewhere, though sometimes they do not know where.
Hope, therefore, is energized by belief in the possibility of getting somewhere, in the possibility of reaching goals, the “somewhere” goals, can be as
many as the wishes and things people propose to themselves 26. Also, Lynch proposes that “this is our classic image of hope: overcoming difficulty, liberating
the self from darkness, escaping from some kind of prison” 27 It is then concluded that there is hope that makes and pushes human being
to learn perpetually. Hope allows to try repeatedly although if it does not work and is really embarrassing. Related to the previous values which are love and
faith, these three values are inseparable. Behind every hope that people earn, there is a strong foundation of faith. If there is no hope for many uncertain things in
human heart, they cannot move forward. Further, those two essential things are strongly demanded to support the ability to love. Without any hope, people will
not have a will or decision to make the one that they love happy. People usually earn the value of hope in the very tough situations.
Everywhere, people suffer from the tragedy, natural disaster, and the unfair treatment from others. Nonetheless, they can transform those unavoidable events
as the moments that challenge their personal development. Therefore, I am obliged to explain a theory of the positive value of the tragedy.
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6. Theory of the Positive Value of Tragedy
