"Faith IS Action"

The class I'm taking in seminary right now is about Apologetics and post-modernism.  As part of this, our professor suggested we start looking at and thinking about the idea of "what is faith?"  And, of course, to answer that, he pointed us to Hebrews 11.  But he asked us to look at the chapter and think a bit about what we do not see in the chapter when it talks about the people who demonstrated faith.  And, what we do not see, is that no one who was considered "faithful" is mentioned in giving a statement of belief in a particular doctrine but, instead, the are all acting.  I asked some Facebook friends for their opinion and one friend, a Christian woman, gave an excellent perspective on this.  With her permission, I am posting it here.  Hope it enlightens a bit.


So, Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” So that means we get to decide whether to “have” faith or not. Maybe “practise” is a better word. So having faith, of course, does not involve proof. So why should we choose it? Why should we believe in a God that we could just as easily have made up in our own heads as have been created by?

When children are asked to “believe” in Tinkerbell or else she will die, we don't have time to think it through logically. All we know is we can choose not to believe in her and she might die as a result or we can choose to believe in her and she might continue to live. And of course, not one of us is willing to be responsible for the consequences if we have chosen not to believe so we decide to believe at that moment. This is a result of an urgent call on our rational mind to help decide what to do with the need of the emotion mind. (They always do work best when in a fairly equal mix)

So now we wonder, “Is God just a Tinkerbell for adults?” If so, why should I believe in God or Tinkerbell?

What do we get out of believing in Tinkerbell? Well, for starters, if she does die, it's somebody else's fault! We did our part darnit! And we are rewarded for our faith by having her live. Yay! Because we like Tinkerbell and we want her to still be there for us as our friend and a piece of magic in our lives. So we get to keep that friend and her continued life confirms our faith.

So how does believing in God help us or reward us? Well there are a lot of rewards to a life of faith, starting with confidence that “My life means something.” “What I do matters.” The ability to keep simply getting up in the morning is made easier if we think there is some point to existing. But, beyond all of the emotional rewards, why should I choose to believe something without proof and play the self-delusion game?

When I walk down the street, suppose that I cross paths with 10 people. Let's also say that 5 of them smile at me and I, without even thinking, automagically smile back. We all have experienced a lifting of spirits by exchanging a brief smile with a stranger on the street. We get some sort of endorphin rush from it and spread the smile. So in this instance, we have at least 6 people smiling....depending how early in the process we decided to keep the smile and share it with however many are left of the non-smilers.

Now, instead, let's decide that I will walk down the street smiling the whole time. That means that all 11 people smile and feel better about their day; definitely, as opposed to the possibility above. So I've gotten a reward from my own brain each time and so have each of the others as we met. Nice.

So what happens when this is applied to faith?

When I get home and want dinner, I have to decide that I will cook dinner before I can eat it. Or I have to earn the money first in order to buy dinner. I have to decide that I will run the water before I get a nice hot bath. If I decide I don't believe dinner will happen tonight, odds are that it won't (unless I have a cooperative and understanding spouse or friend...and that probably required that I've been willing to pay for this in the past as well by doing similar favours as part of an ongoing relationship). So it could be said that I have to invest a certain amount of faith in the result by taking action before anything can happen. This is similar to the concept that, whether you believe you can or that you can't, you're right.

We have just created a reality.

But, if we are creating God's existence, then how do we justify faith that He/She created us and everything in the past? (Whether time actually exists or not? I'm not qualified or prepared to go there!) Therefore, paradox exists.

So if “God” does not exist, I lose all the rewards of faith and hopefully survive anyway and live a meaningful life in some other way. If “God” does exist, I can create my own positive environment and live a happier, more fulfilled life and it will be true because I made it so. Which still begs the question. Cause and effect. It can't have caused me to be if I caused it to be.

My next question is “Who put the food in the fridge?” It might have been me or it might have been someone else. But someone set up the potential for dinner. Someone put in plumbing and installed a bathtub. Someone made it possible for me to create my own reality by faith. Well, maybe not. Maybe it all just happened. If so, it's a pretty amazing happening. The way nature dovetails and cycles through phases and life keeps continuing and change keeps occurring while everything stays the same.

We have what appears to be unlimited growth potential as human beings. We continue to learn more about our environment every day and continue creating medical miracles and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. We are so far from knowing it all at this point that we have no way to imagine how may eons it will be before we have a clue where the end point could ever be. There is no way to solve this mystery at this point in existence. At least not for us humans.

Perhaps if we can't determine the big truth here, we have to settle for the myriad of smaller truths that we do have? Perhaps we have to go with a working hypothesis and choose the most effective option? It has already been determined that people with some sort of belief system tend to be healthier and happier. We can choose to believe that God is only a human construct, though the word “only” in the context of what humans can construct may be inappropriate. We may need to believe in the evidence of our own eyes that humans can do miraculous things as it is, before we can believe in God. Before we can conceive that that we could have a creator, we may have to believe in the magic that we create in the universe ourselves, so we can see that there could be a bigger pattern. That our pattern that we are weaving everyday may be one small piece of a much huger concept; just like with fractals.

I guess for me, knowing that I will never, on this earth, understand the answer unless there is a God, knowing that choosing faith is pragmatic, effective, and fits the patterns as I can see them so far, knowing that if faith can create the reality, the potential must be there in the first place and I didn't put those groceries in that fridge and neither did any other human I can imagine, there is only one choice. Unless I choose to live in depression, fear, anxiety, hopelessness....and how can I choose that? So yes Tinkerbell, I do believe in fairies.

Thoughts? Opinions?