The Meanings of Faith

I begin this discussion, rather unpromisingly, with an excerpt from a viral email story. In the story, a student responds to an intimidating, old atheist professor with a dramatic, thought provoking response:

"Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt the professor's brain, touched or smelled the professor's brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir. So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?"

Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable.

Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers. "I guess you'll have to take them on faith.""

An objection might be made to this story. A brain is something which empirical evidence does point to despite what the student says. We have looked inside people's skulls and found brains—in fact, we have never not found one when we looked. In fact, scientists—in what some have taken to be evidence against the existence of souls—have observed that people who have had parts of their brains damaged have had their memories and even their personality altered. Hence, it appears from evidence that a brain in fact exists and serves a purpose. Thus it may seem like the professor's response here is just wrong: believing in a brain has nothing to do with faith at all. Sure, we could quibble and make the distinction that we have to take a professionals word "by faith" that what they have researched actually happened. If believing in the existence of a brain counts as "faith," all we have really done is expanded the term “faith” until it is meaningless. Perhaps, the professor is wrong though. Perhaps believing that God is good or that life is worth living is just not the same kind of thing as believing that we have brains.

Faith is a word which I think gets abused in our society pretty often. In fact, I think that what we call "faith" is really two different things. One type of faith is something that, in a sense, we need every day to keep getting up in the morning—something valuable, something which we need to protect, and something it is one of our highest duties to attempt to inspire in others. However, I want to suggest here that there is another sort of "faith" out there that masquerades as something good and is often confused with the good faith– it isn't anything valuable, but is rather a sort of excuse or escape from reason which can lead to confused or potentially embarrassing choices.

I think reason is important. However, I have not deluded myself into thinking that reason alone can ever be a substitute for faith. There is one sort of faith which I think that we would be better off replacing by reason, and one which reason can't touch, and perhaps can't ever fully understand. Sometimes reason might be employed strategically to help us correct or build our faith, but this faith will always rest on a different foundation from reason. Knowledge is not an end in itself – knowledge alone leads us where it led King Solomon – to disillusionment and the discovery that all is vanity. However without knowledge, without reason, there is nothing to protect us from the bad kind of faith. Reason becomes very important, then – in a sense, it clarifies what we need to protect (the good faith), and it also shows us what we need to repair or remove altogether in order to keep from harming or deluding ourselves and others (the bad faith).

Bad Faith: Two Case Studies

A man has a dream of flying. He is devoted to the attainment of this dream wholeheartedly and so he makes himself some wings out of cardboard and Styrofoam. He is confident that these wings will hold him because he has invested large amounts of time in them, but most of all after all his work, he just feels in his heart that these wings will hold him. His friends tell him that they've had some doubts, but the man refuses to listen, remains confident and jumps off the top of his house. In a sense, this man has faith.

Another example which might hit some of us closer to home—a young man is in love. He is certain of what his heart tells him, invests time and money and remains devoted to this girl wholeheartedly. In a sense, his very identity becomes tied to her—and one day, his friends come to tell him that they think she's been cheating on him. Though the friends seem to have good intentions and the evidence seems to back up their story strongly, the young man refuses to believe it, and remains sure in his love, never questioning—until she uses his money and attention for awhile longer before shattering him with the news that she has found someone else. This man, too, had faith.

But there is a real problem with these sorts of faith which we can all see—though these young men have faith, the faith has not protected them or uplifted them in any sense, but instead has thrust them into danger or foolishness which comes through ignorance.

Now, my father (a Pentecostal minister, who happens to be one of my heroes) talks about having faith that a three-legged chair will hold you up as an example of bad faith. He describes the mistake as having faith in the wrong thing. In a sense, this is what these two men are guilty of (faith in badly made wings and a deceptive woman).

However, there is a subtle problem which my father's distinction brings up. For one could also say, in a sense, that these fellows have faith in the right things—specifically, their actions could be said to display faith in the idea of following your dreams and the ideal of being dedicated to love.

I think we have to revise my father's statement a little bit. Perhaps the problem in these instances is not having faith in the wrong thing, but having the wrong sort of faith. We could define the wrong sort of faith is a kind which ignores any wise advice that contradicts one’s vision. Bad faith, I want to suggest, has two causes: emotion and isolation.

Emotion------------

For instance, I once fell in love with a girl I had hardly even met. Short, blonde hair plus a singing voice that reminded me of a mix between Norah Jones and an angelic host had left me head over heels. I sent her long, soul-searching emails, I wrote her songs, and sent her carefully crafted mix CDs. Really, at the time, it was the only reasonable response to the situation. But then one night while praying I had an emotional experience that left me sure and certain that God had spoken to me that I would one day marry this girl.

I should have probably chalked this experience up to the fact that strange things can happen when hormonal teenagers stay up late at night during bible camp. However, back in reality when I was reading my Bible every day, I found some support for this idea. I was sure at the time that God had hand-picked three distinct Bible passages for my specific situation. One I remember particularly was one where God admonished the Israelites for failing to take the Promised Land because of unbelief. Since I had earlier had what I thought was a spiritual experience where God told me to marry this girl, I took this quiet time reading as confirmation of the previous word.

Because of this emotion (being infatuated with this girl) I found myself with the wrong sort of faith. I received a "confirmation" from God not because God had actually given me a confirmation (if God actually had had any feelings about my adoration for this girl they no doubt would have been strictly limited to sympathetic amusement). The problem was that I badly wanted to receive a confirmation which supported what my heart wanted to believe.

Isolation---------

The other ingredient necessary for bad faith is isolation. Good thing, I was not left in isolation in this situation. I had a wise father who had the courage to tell me that I may not have been right (and most of you know it can take courage to me that). He valued my experiences and thought God may have been making me a general promise of a godly wife. However, he was very hesitant about the value of this word towards the specific girl. He could see what I did not have clear perspective on – that I was a young man who was in love and young men in love are not trustworthy guides to their own lives. He helped me think through the situation—questioning me instead of accepting what I said as the certainties which I felt they were. He wondered why exactly God would choose to give me a word about a specific girl who lived far away and did not seem romantically interested in me. Instead of rationalizing that I was hearing from God better than a pastor and holding onto the emotion in my heart, I went the other way and had to admit the somewhat embarrassing truth—that I had wasted a lot of time and energy and had no more spiritual enlightenment about my love life than do most college freshmen.

This second ingredient of isolation does not actually mean that you have to be alone. Isolation can come even in large groups – for what would have happened if my father came up to me, listened to what I said, and agreed completely that I had heard from God, because he didn't want to run the risk that I would be offended ? In these cases, I would still be in isolation – isolation from criticism. This is the second ingredient necessary for the wrong kind of faith.

In order to prevent this second ingredient for bad faith, one has to surround oneself with people who are not afraid to tell you that you're making a mistake. These friends are rare, because as we all know, it is usually not a very rewarding experience to tell someone close to you that you think they are wrong about something. Often they will ignore you and they are likely to be offended. Most of the time we conclude that bringing it up is just not worth it. That's why if we want to avoid an ingredient for bad faith we have to have the humility to be approachable. When our self image is threatened by someone who disagrees with us, we need to try to take that factor out of the equation, resisting the impulse to lash out or be dismissive. Our pride should not rest in being plank-free (Matt 7:3)– our self-worth needs to rest in our identity as imperfect people who are trying to be better. Though certainty can be helpful for action, it can also alienate those with opposing views. Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed once that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Certainty, of course, is only noble when we have arrived at the truth. If we are missing an area in which we could grow, however, certainty simply creates pride and makes it more difficult for us to retract our opinions once we have given them.

What exactly do I think falls under the category of bad faith? This is a sensitive question and one in which I cannot claim absolute certainty. I can only share some areas in which I have some concerns—namely ways in which we try to hear from God. I am all for this in general. I don't wish to counsel anyone to give up in their attempts to quiet their own desires and listen for the path that takes them higher. However, I would just like to counsel caution in the two areas where bad faith is possible—the areas of emotion and isolation.

For this reason, I don't think it is a particularly good idea to try to hear a word from God through prayer by yourself on an issue in which you have a strong emotional tie to. The example of trying to hear who God has picked for you to marry strikes me as a good example, but there are many decisions in our life in which we have an emotional investment. For example, if you are discontent in a particular area (with your job, where you live, with your spouse?), my advice would not be to pray about it by yourself. The problem with this strategy seems to me that your heart may be likely to latch on to any "word" which will lead you away from the current situation. In these areas, better counsel might be to talk with other people whose opinions you trust, considering the costs and benefits of the situation in light of your ideals. In the process you will still need to use your emotions as a guide since very few, if any, decisions can be made without emotions. Sometimes going by the peace that you have in your heart is all that you have. However, justifying and explaining your personal convictions to others (or even to yourself) can be helpful as well. In is my feeling that if God speaks to us it is more often through wise people than through isolated emotional impressions.

Secondly, I think it is important to be aware of the areas in which we are in isolation, or surrounded by people that are not capable of or willing to disagree with us. Imagine if you had heard someone tell you they were absolutely certain that atheism was correct, but then you found out that they had grown up from a young age around people that told them this, they only read books which supported this view, and they had not ever tried regularly attending church, praying or reading the Bible. Would we feel that this person was qualified to make a judgment with certainty? Probably not. In the same way, I don't think it is quite fair for a Christian who has never read any books that disagree with her point of view and grown up around people who rarely disagree with her Christianity to be so certain of her views. I'm not saying that Christians all need to stop reading the Bible and immediately pick up "The God Delusion," avoiding Christian books for the rest of their lives. However, I am saying that until a Christian has read something more than Lee Strobel or Josh MacDowell (both of whom support the conclusion that a Christian already believes) it should be difficult for her to claim absolute certainty for her faith. She can definitely feel honest about believing what she does, but to say she is sure that she cannot be wrong, just strikes me as being as misguided as the atheist's self-certainty who has never read the Bible.

The Good Faith?--------- So now that we have discussed the bad sort of faith, we need to look at good faith. What's left over after we remove certainty from the equation of faith?

As I see it, good faith is a form of resolution. It is an empowering decision to continue the fight, to continue to live from the heart. Good faith is most often found after a collapse of certainty—it is not the result of indoctrination or unchallenged beliefs, but what happens after those beliefs are undermined. Mother Theresa provides an excellent example of this kind of faith. Her lifetime of service to orphans in India cannot be explained by any other motivational factors. She was not the feeling of God's presence, since her journals report that she felt as if God abandoned her. Neither was she motivated by unwavering certainty that her actions would provide her with a heavenly reward since her journals report that she had had serious doubts in her religion. The faith that motivated Mother Theresa was something different—it was a creative act of courage that helped her continue to get up each morning and do what she felt was right even when the outcome and purpose of her work was uncertain.

The good faith is what keeps parents loving their infant when it wakes them up for the fourth time in the night or when their teenager when he lies about crashing the car. It keeps spouses continuing to give grace to each other even when they are tired and vulnerable.

It also takes the good kind of faith to try something which might fail – every great advance which has ever occurred was undertaken by men or women who had a chance to fail. To look at the odds and see them clearly, but to find a resolution within that is stronger than the odds is the only way in which great achievements have been made – from a sixth grade math classroom where a kid faces his fear of not appearing smart and asks questions until he really gets it to an engineer who suggests a ground-breaking idea which might get laughed off the table.

This kind of faith is what we need – and it does not have to be in any particular thing or event. Rather, this faith can come from ourselves – not that we have faith that we never can make mistakes or fail, but faith that we will not let uncertainty or possibility of failure determine us. Or perhaps it is faith that we will not let a tragedy steal the joy out of our lives or choke our ability to continue to give joy to others. Or faith that what we have done has not gone unnoticed but has mattered to every person to whom we have shown love. This is the faith which I think we all need and I hope we never lose and the kind which we should continue to fight to encourage in others.

If this kind of faith comes from believing in God, than I am all for believing in God. However, if you talk to a religious leader who is wise in the ways of faith, you're likely to hear that having certainty regarding future promises in the world is not what faith is about. Believing that God wants the best for me does not mean being certain that God will give me the next promotion at work. Mature faith is about the process, not about a destination. Our character can be strengthened by times of uncertainty—we wean ourselves from dependence on material or temporal rewards by having the good kind of faith. However, the bad kind of faith does the precise opposite—it makes us "certain" without evidence that God is going to give us opportunity X or blessing Y: this only increases our dependence on circumstances for our happiness and sets us up for disappointment when we realize that God, or just the world, does not work the way we thought. Mature faith is something which exists apart from knowledge or certainty. Mature faith is a state of heart, not a state of mental agreement which the facts or our minds or a Bible suggests to us. Faith is not knowledge—it is higher than and separate from knowledge. Faith is not mental certainty—it is a resolution of the heart.

There are two implications for this definition of faith I am proposing:

1) There is no fact anyone can tell you which can necessarily take away your faith—so Richard Dawkins' spouting facts about the non-existence of God cannot touch someone's resolution of contentment, hope for the future, and serenity of mind.

And also

2) No claim of knowledge can be made from the foundation of faith. Since faith and knowledge are different, one cannot use one to claim the other. For instance, because I have faith about the future, does not mean that I have any particular reason to be certain that the particular outcome I am hoping for will actually happen. Similarly, just because a particular system of belief may currently be a source of how I happen to be inspired to live my life does not mean that I would ever be justified in claiming that any particular tenet of this system of belief is true.

I am aware that it may be difficult for some people to have good faith apart from feelings of certainty. What I have called "good faith" apart from certainty is potentially a very fragile thing and may not even be able to exist for some people apart from assurances of certain comforting beliefs (ex, “One day I will live forever with God in heaven”). However, what I'm trying to say is that I do not think that good faith necessarily requires any mental certainty. Perhaps good faith just requires a courageous heart.