The Faiths in Faith

On Healthy Religious Faith

Jul 22, 2008

Saying For Today: Healthy religious faith will always include common sense and transcend common sense, for common sense is just that: common.

The Holocaust has yielded astounding stories of bravery and faith. In France, French nationals hid a Jewish family in the basement of their home. The Jewish family waited a long time for deliverance. At the conclusion of the war, these words were found scribbled on the wall of the basement:
"I believe in the sun even when it does not shine.
I believe in love even when it is not given.
I believe in God even when he is silent."

Aldous Huxley, in his classic The Perennial Philosophy, describes four kinds of faith. We can call the four kinds of faith as follows: Trusting, Authoritative, Propositional, Religious. Let us take each one in turn.

1) Trusting.

This alludes to the universal capacity and practice of trust in something or someone. Going into surgery, I trust the skills of the surgeon and his or her team of assistants. Translated to the religious realm, trusting refers to faith in the Sacred, however we define That. Faith as trust is an innate capacity that shows in any form of putting confidence in another person or thing.

When Scripture speaks of faith, or believing in, God or Christ, the reference is to "trust." When this is a verb, the Greek is well rendered "faithing in" or "trusting in."

2) Authoritative.

Here, we trust the authority of someone. Because a person is a doctor, lawyer, educator, scientist, theologian, ... we might agree with his or her conclusions, for we esteem as trustworthy the credentials of the person.

3) Propositional.

Faith as propositional connotes trust in statements that claim to be true. This, Huxley shares, we have not verified, but it connotes verifiable data. I can say, "I believe black holes do exists." I have not seen one myself. A scientist can say, "No, you have not, but there are black holes, and I can prove it." I can trust that the North Pole exists, based on reports of other persons, though I have not been there to verify it myself: yet, that such a place exists is provable and does not depend on my verification.

4) Religious.

Religious faith includes the previous three forms of faith. It goes a step farther, however. Religion makes claims that are, at least presently, unverifiable. For example, some claim that Jesus will come back in clouds of glory ~ that is unverifiable. Some Christians teach that Satan exists ~ such is unverifiable. Buddhist claim the Buddha experienced a spiritual enlightenment ~ that is unverifiable. Some Jews claim that the Jews are the chosen people of God ~ that is unverifiable.

Healthy religious faith will always include common sense and transcend common sense, for common sense is just that: common. A faith refusing to be challenged as to its claims risks appearing as refusing common sense; a faith refusing to make claims beyond common sense cannot claim to be religious at all.

In our religious journeys, we will inevitably find a mixture of the above faiths in our faith. Religious faith always will grow from the trusting, authoritative, propositional, and religious.

The contemplative aspect of faith introduces us to the core of healthy religious faith: trust in the Ground of Being. Here, you embrace the verifiable and unverifiable, while remaining prepared to disown claims that might be popular but strike as not in alignment with what we discern as the core of Truth.

No matter how much we want something to be true, that does not make it true. And, sometimes, the greater act of faith is to accept as untrue something we once held dearly to be true.

When I became a follower of Jesus, I accepted a personal and growing relationship with Christ. Jesus never gave a creed or statement of faith; he never said, "Here are the four ways to become my follower." I did not become a Christian by believing in the right four beliefs. I did not enter union with Jesus Christ through a creed or statement of faith. I trusted in ~ and still ~ the Person of Jesus Christ. I do not understand or have final conclusions on several aspects of Christian faith; but Jesus never once said I have to, to have a relationship with him.

A healthy, personal faith in personal encounter with the Sacred, as best we know That at any point in life, can lead us to affirm the spirit of the assurance of Paul, as stated in the following:

38I am sure that nothing can separate us from God's love--not life or death, not angels or spirits, not the present or the future, 39and not powers above or powers below. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God's love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord!

*Romans 8.38-39, CEV

This assurance can only arise from trust, trust gestated in and born through a relationship with the Divine Presence.

Furthermore, a healthy faith can open us to explore how we and others who seem to disagree might be speaking of the same Truth in different ways. For example, we Christians tend to speak of the Divine in terms of human traits, while Buddhists tend to speak of the Divine in traits not of human qualities. Could it be we are often referring to the same Reality and disagreeing more over language than substance? We need to explore this, or we might be committing idolatry of image and word, which is as much an idolatry as bowing down to a golden calf and addressing it as "God."

How do the four aspects of faith contribute to your relationship with the Sacred?