What does it mean to have faith? How can we begin to think and talk about faith in a way that keeps the conversation going?
One of the difficulties of answering this question popped up in an essay which Richard Rohr wrote for the NPR series, This I Believe. He said, “… many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and, clarity, while thinking that we are people of “faith”! How strange that the very word “faith” has come to mean its exact opposite.”
The religious people Rohr is talking about trust God to give them reliable and immutable answers and explanations which they can then use to navigate through life. In practical terms, their faith is in their own knowledge of the truth of God. On the other hand, Rohr trusts God to stick with him in a world filled with ambiguities and paradoxes. In practical terms, his faith is in the continued presence of God in this life. These are obviously two very different kinds of faith, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they are “exact opposites.”
The contrast between these two types of faith is most easily seen in the cognitive arena of thinking and knowing. But faith can run much deeper than either having the answers or accepting ambiguity. Faith can seep down from the mind and into the heart. When it does, belief feels more like trust. That is more like the kind of faith that Rohr writes about in his essay.
Just as faith need not be limited to the beliefs of the mind, so it also need not be limited to the trust of the heart. Faith can seep through the heart and begin to soak into the body, into our lives in the world. When it does, trust feels more like faithfulness. This is the kind of faith that I am seeking, and it is a part of the third way or third consistency that I have been trying to write about in this blog.
The illustration above is an extremely stylized diagram of the expansion of belief into trust and of trust into faithfulness; of the movement from the mind down into the heart and from the heart out into life.
In one sense, faith isn’t really faith if it is limited to a believing mind or even to a believing mind and a trusting heart. Faith is only faith when it has become a faithful life. A similar understanding can be found in Jesus parable of the sower. (Mark 4:1-20) The seed is sown in vain unless it falls on soil in which it can send down roots and gather up the nutrients it needs to produce fruit.
We can begin to fruitfully think about faith when we think with our hearts and our lives as well as with our minds. We can begin talking about faith—expressing our own faith and listening to the faith stories of others—when we include “belief” and “trust” and “faithfulness” in that conversation.
