One of my acquaintances on social media recently decried his problems with “faith.” He is a Christian, one of the Eastern Orthodoxy variety I believe, but in his own words he is more of a “Roman” in practice and temperament. Not, mind you, Roman as in “Roman Catholic”, but Roman as in, “citizen of the now extinct empire.”
I think a lot of people are probably like this.
See, in ancient Rome religion had in some sense very little to do with what you believed. In our own time most religion has become hyper focused on orthodoxy (right belief) but in the ancient world it was not so. They were all about orthopraxy (right action). Did Joe-Cicero down the street have the right beliefs about Jove or Vesta or Mars? Was his theology correct?
Didn’t really matter.
For most Romans religion was just about showing up on the feast days, lighting your candle, saying some prayers, and getting on with your day. Whether or not it was all even real was sort of secondary. Much of the populace was functionally atheistic and probably didn’t believe in any serious way that Jove was even up their to smell their candles. Didn’t much matter. Religion was as much a social convention as anything else and all the rites and rituals bound the community together so they did them anyway. You know, how Dad goes to mass on Christmas and Easter and let’s Mom hang a cross in the living room to keep the family happy. Same same.
With the arrival of Christianity though something different happened. Whereas the ancient world was all about performing the correct rites and offering the correct sacrifices to appease the gods, these Christians came along talking about “faith” and “belief.”
“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved!” screamed the street preacher.
How odd.
I mean, just on the face of it, if you think about it, how on earth could just believing something make any difference? At least in the pagan model of focusing on rites and rituals you’re out actually doing something. Something that could, at least in theory, affect change somehow or other. But just believing? Just having faith? That’s your religion?
To be fair scarcely anyone in the Church could actually buy it either. The history of Christianity is one of people constantly inventing checklists of to-do items in order ot make sure they’re right with God. Church on Sunday? Check. No profanity? Check. Weekly confession? Check. Did my fasting? Check. Ten percent of my income? Check check check.
Martin Luther as famously over tangled in such machinations. Hyper worried about losing his soul he spent all his energy fussing over such checklists. He would spend hours in the confessional making sure to enumerate every tiny possible sin he had committed only to walk out of the booth, have a naughty thought, and then instantly rush back in with a panic before he was struck by lightning and damned to hell. Eventually his mind cracked under the weight of such a strain and he declared Sola Fide!! (Faith Alone!!) to all the world, sparking the Protestant Revolution. “You don’t need to do anything but believe” he championed. All those works, all that orthopraxy… rubbish. Load of garbage.
Was he right?
Yes.
And, also No.
The tension between Faith and Works is not new. It goes right back to the earliest days of the religion. As Paul said in his letter to the Ephesians: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Fair enough. But how are we to square that with St. James, who writes in his epistles: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” and “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”
What’s going on here? How do we resolve this tension. While we’re at it, just what is Faith, anyway?
An important question. Most people today seem to be under the impression that “faith” means something more or less like “believing in something without evidence.” That something usually being some sort of dogma or creed. Of course, such blind acceptance of things as fact without any evidence is by definition irrational. Irrationality isn’t always bad. Music is irrational. Sex is irrational. But in a culture so consume with intellectual pursuits it’s no wonder that the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins found a great deal of traction exploiting this flaw in most people’s religious thinking. “I believe X,” the religious would say. “Where’s your evidence!?" scream the New Atheists. Most often such would be met with naught but silence.
I submit to you that’s not what Faith is.
Faith is something else.
Faith is something that, when you understand it, causes all the apparent paradoxes surrounding Faith and Works to dissolve nearly instantaneously.
Faith is a Trust Fall.
I hope you all have a good relationship with your father. Statistically, a lot of you don’t. But if your father is not a good candidate here then use whomever it is in your life that you have the best relationship with. Your spouse maybe. Perhaps a sibling or a dear friend. Maybe your grandmother. In your mind go to the person who you would trust with your life. The person who’s always been there for you and who you know always will be. Think about how you feel about that person.
Okay. Great.
Faith is feeling that way about God.
That’s it. That’s the long and the short of Faith.
The most oft repeated command in scripture is “fear not” because Fear is the opposite of faith. When you fear, you are implicitly acknowledging that you do not believe God will catch you in the Trust Fall. Whatever the issue, money, health concerns, relationship worries, fear of accidents, of wars, of diseases. When these things come up and you feel fear, when they come up and you act out of fear… you do not have faith. Simple as. Claim the contrary all you want. Wear your crosses, go to Sunday School, cling to that rosary… meaningless.
At least as far as Faith is concerned.
If you do not act as though God will deliver you from evil, if you have Fear… you do not believe.
That’s one of the reasons covid was so damning.
“We believe this is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, necessary for our salvation.”
So why’d you stop coming for months to receive it?
“Virus might’ve killed us.”
Okay. Then you don’t believe.
Actions don’t match words. If someone has faith but has not works, can that faith save him?
You believed a virus could kill you before your appointed time to die. That a virus could override the will of God who formed you in the womb and knew you.
Be honest with yourself.
Is that faith?
The apostles were on a boat and Jesus was sleeping below deck. A storm blew up and the waves grew and the thunder rolled and they panicked, screaming in terror that they were about to drown.
And all the while Jesus right there with them.
The whole time.
Is Christ not also with you? Do you believe that? Do your actions bear that belief out?
“Master! Do you not care that we perish!?!?”
“You of little faith.”
It’s Fear.
It’s all Fear, see?
Every ounce of fear you possess is a mustard seed’s worth of faith you do not have.
“I believe God will provide for me.”
And yet you are terrified of losing your job.
How curious.
Terrified to the point of agreeing to do and say things against your conscience. Foreclosing on old widows maybe. Looking the other way as your company dumps pesticides in the river. Maybe you nod silently in the HR meeting as they tell you it is right and good that you all support castrating boys and cutting the developing breasts off young girls.
Can that faith save you?
You know it’s wrong. You know it. And yet… What if you lose your paycheck? What will you eat? What about the house? And how will you buy clothes?
So I tell you do not worry about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body what you will put on. Is not life more than meat? And the body more than clothes?
But… but… if I don’t go along with it I’ll get fired. And if I get fired then my wife and… my kids… I mean, what will become of them. We’ll be homeless. Our health insurance. And… and…
Consider the birds of the air. They do not sow nor reap nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not worth more than they?
“But Yoshi,” I hear you say. “Bad things do happen. You can’t just ignore that. You have to plan for such things. How do you know God has not given us a mind to be prudent and to prepare and protect ourselves by making shrewd choices?”
Bad things do happen. Yes. No argument here. Thing is though, and you’re not going to like this part, a shockingly large percentage of all the those things are consensual. As I wrote about here, a strong case can be made that there are no innocent victims. An iron clad case? No. But a strong one. God has given us a degree of dominion over our lives and with that the ability to make free choices, for good and ill. You can choose to suffer. You can choose to die before your appointed time. No, I don’t believe covid can’t kill you unless God wants it to. Sure. But also at any point in time you can suck on a shotgun and pull the trigger. You know… if you want. God gave you a life to do with as you will and you’re allowed to reject it. In full or in part. People do it all the time. Much of our suffering is consensual.
Some examples:
You get cancer. Terrible. But in how many cases have people, in a round about way, consented to have their cancer?
Yoshi that’s outrageous! Insensitive! How can you be so cruel!?
It says right there on the box of cigarettes that you’ll get cancer if you use them.
Is this not a form of consent? And can you pretend the same is not also true of alcohol? What of all the other things you put into or do to your body which you know full well will damage it. Is this not a form of consent? Are you not, by your actions, consenting to future suffering? Making, as it were, a deal with the devil?
You are.
Or perhaps you go through a divorce. It’s awful. Destroys your life.
How many people who have been through such can truly and honestly say that they did nothing, nothing whatsoever, to contribute to their partner leaving them?
Not many. People continue in behaviors and habits that they know full well are damaging their relationship. Year after year after year.
Is this not consent?
Or maybe you were robbed at gunpoint.
Look inside yourself. Were you not, even the tiniest bit, asking for it by driving around in your luxury sports car with your expensive watch and fancy suit? Were you not asking to be noticed? Were you not asking for others to be envious of you? Weren’t you asking them to want what you have?
Isn’t that what you wanted?
Or perhaps you were raped.
Well… let’s not go down that road right now.
The old psychologists knew well of this sort of behavior. “Self destructive" they called it. The thrill of tempting fate. The excitement of putting yourself in danger. Thanatos. The Death Drive. The urge to free solo up the side of a mountain or drive your motorcycle at 120 mph without a helmet. The urge to get to to war. The urge to risk it all on red for double or nothing. The deep seated desire to date the bad boy, knowing full well that he will one day hurt you.
Death Drive.
Everybody has it.
We consent to our suffering all the time.
We don’t want to admit this though. Because we like to be victims. We like to be victims because then we have an excuse to act out all our anger and bitterness in the world. I’m justified in hurting this person because I was hurt first. We want to hold that grudge. We want to perpetuate that feud. We want to see other suffer out of spite. We want to see relationships fail out of jealousy.
Can we then say we bear no responsibility when such splashes back on us?
As Jesus said, “With the measure you use it will be measured out to you.”
Much of our suffering is consensual. We play with the Darkness and then get upset when we get burned.
But… what if it’s not?
What if you really are an innocent victim of misfortune? What if, through no fault of your own, things just went sour for you?
I do not deny that such happens. If, after honest reflection about your life and examination of your conscience, you conclude that you truly are innocent… then what?
In such instances you must assume that your misfortune is a trial given by God to teach you something, or to purge some evil from out of you. Perhaps you did not go broke because of your own greed which caused you to buy into a get rich quick scheme and purchase an NFT for tens of thousands of dollars which subsequently crashed to nothing. No. Maybe you went broke for honest reasons. Do you think such then happens for nothing? At random? Or do you believe in God? May he not be trying to teach you to rely on him and his provision instead of the world and its money? Or perhaps you were, say, a surgeon, one who felt a great deal of pride and superiority over his fellow man for his station. If your suddenly lost your ability to practice medicine, could it not be that God needed you to be humbled?
God only sends us trouble for the sake of our own souls.
That’s what Faith is. Absolute trust.
It is to be asleep in a boat in the middle of a thunder storm knowing that absolutely nothing can ever harm you unless God wills it. Unless, like I said, you agree to be hurt. Faith is to live your life without any fear. With, as Christ said, no thought for tomorrow. No anxiety. No worry. No dread. It is to live in the knowledge that nothing happens without a reason. That you are not the victim of happenstance.
Faith is knowing that you are in God’s hands.
Knowing it and acting like it’s true.
This is a superpower. Genuinely. If you actually have this faith you sync up with God. You can literally walk into a fiery furnace or stand unharmed in the middle of a lion’s den. You can say, quite literally, to a fig tree, “get up and be thrown into the ocean,” and it will happen.
That’s what faith is. Living as though God is actually real.
And it’s a faith you know by your works. Because you are not worried that you will run out of money when you give to charity. Because you are not afraid to go up and embrace the leper, knowing that your health is ultimately in God’s hands. Because you fear not wars nor rumors of wars, nor conflict, nor poison, nor sword. Faith sets you free from all that. Faith gives you what you wanted all along. As Paul said, it is the substance of things hoped for. Faith fulfills itself.
If you have Faith you do not even fear Death and all threats of death and specters of Death have not hold over you.
Why?
Because you know that in the Trust Fall of Eternity you will be caught. You know that you will breath your last and fall back through the darkness into loving arms.
And yet…
Here you are worried about a car payment.
You of little faith.
As always, thought-provoking and...well...just provoking. :-)
You call it faith, I call it knowing: "May we know in our deepest knowing / that we are not alone / that if we fall we will be caught / by the invisible web of magnificence / we weave every day"
Thanks for this essay, Yoshi.🙏
I appreciate this post :) although I would say that when the Bible talks about faith, it is in something far more certain than you suggest. For example, Abraham was saved by faith because he believed in God’s Word - i.e. God’s promise that he would have offspring. As a side note, this is how James defined “works” in James 2: Abraham believed in God’s promise, and it showed in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. As for Christians, our faith rests in believing that Jesus did indeed come to save us from our sins - this is why Jesus says in John 20:29 - blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed (that Jesus rose). And beyond that, we believe that Jesus will come again to consummate his rule. This doesn’t mean we don’t fear or have anxieties, but that we trust that God’s grand plan for his kingdom remains in motion regardless of our circumstances, and that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love, nor threaten our certain salvation. The solution is not to force ourselves to take a leap, or to convince ourselves that God is trustworthy and that we’d be unscathed. The solution is to understand our father more through his Word so that we become more certain of his concrete promises!