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On the Meaning of Faith
By The Apostle | September 6, 2007
Recent news of Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s struggle with doubt towards the end of her life has prompted me to visit one of the more important foundations of the Church of Man.
Faith and science have been pitted against each other many times. While there is sometimes, maybe even often, a conflict between the two I am not convinced that one abolishes the need for the other.
Part of the problem today is that faith is construed as an idea that one believes in a supernatural deity. In that sense, it has become “the other f-word” in certain circles, notably the scientific extremists who deny any possibility of the supernatural.
What then is faith? Faith is persistence despite evidence that your position might be incorrect. Sure, it is easy to apply it to beliefs in the supernatural, but in reality we all express faith. We can not empirically prove every premise upon which we act. For example, we do not know for sure that the traffic light has malfunctioned and that the cross-traffic at an intersection might suddenly get the green light at the same time we do, but we make a reasonable assumption. That is a small act of faith in the mechanism. What might be a larger leap of faith is assuming that someone won’t run the red light as you cross the intersection. If’ you’ve ever been in that kind of car accident, you know what I mean when I say it becomes quite a large act of faith in your fellow man to cross those intersections in the weeks and months following such a collision.
A contrarian example of commonplace faith can be found in the fictional television character Dr. Gregory House. House is a devout believer in science, who scoffs at the religious, even non-spiritual “philosophical,” positions of others. Yet time and again, in the face of the facts and evidence, he persists in his belief that a patient is not yet cured, that things are not what they appear, and that someone else’s interpretation or diagnosis is wrong and his is right, even when he can not support is position on facts or evidence. In a sense, Dr. House is an example of a man of faith who scorns the very idea of faith in a spiritual sense.
Another common misconception is that faith is the opposite of doubt. I’ve seen this idea surfacing lately in discussions about Mother Teresa. Faith is persistence – therefore for faith to be present there must be something to persist against. The relationship between faith and doubt is very much the same as the relationship between courage and fear. In order to have courage, or to show courage, one must overcome fear. If there is nothing to fear, there cannot be courage. There’s a quote from the movie Angus, in which it is said that Superman cannot be brave, for in being indestructible he has nothing to fear. Without fear, he cannot have courage.
A knight does not charge forth courageously to slay a common rabbit, as he has nothing to fear from the rabbit. However, if he is afraid of the dark, then venturing into a dark cave to rescue a maiden is an act of courage – even if there is no dragon there to slay. If a soldier is afraid, he is not called a coward. If he flees the battle, if he retreats, if he lets his fear paralyze him into inaction, his actions are referred to as cowardly. His persistence, despite his fear, is the mark of courage.
Faith works in the same way. If you are sure of something, you can not claim to have faith in it. If you doubt something, you have not lost your faith. If you abandon your position or your belief, then you have lost your faith. But if you persist, even as you doubt what you are doing is for the right reason, then your faith is not weak, it is being tested and is still strong.
What can we derive from this? Consider Mother Teresa. Did she really “lose” her faith if she thought late in life that maybe God didn’t exist, that maybe all she had done and was doing was for nothing?
And what of a person who claims their faith is unshakable, that they “know for certain” some supernatural idea is correct? Can they really have faith, and is it really strong if it is without a doubt?
And while a church, like the Church of Man, might be godless, might it still be a community of faith?
Tags: Mother Teresa of Calcutta, doubt, Church of Man, Faith, science, supernatural, act of faith, Dr. Gregory House, spiritual, Mother Teresa, courage, fear, godless
Topics: For Consideration, Regarding the Church of Man | No Comments »
