Faith

[thetatiana]

We were talking about faith tonight on Feminist Mormon Housewives, and I posted something quickly there, an idea I wanted to develop further. Because when other people talk about faith, I think often they mean something completely different than I have. Maybe I don't have faith at all by their definition.

I don’t think I do have faith, if by faith we mean belief in something with no evidence. Now, I can't objectively prove the existence of God. I can't point to instruments that register his presence, or show his face to scientists and have them shake his hand. But personally, privately, I had to have scads of evidence before I believed. It's a subjective type of evidence, but it's very real evidence, nonetheless. It just isn't the sort that convinces anyone who didn't personally experience it. It's the sort that is accesible to one observer only. Me. =)

When I *did* exercise faith is when I began to question that I knew anything about how to live life. When I began to realize that there were awesome, wonderful, joyful, kind, and good people in the world, and they knew more about living life than I did. It was when I actually entertained the notion that they might be telling the simple truth about where all that joy and goodness was coming from, and thought it might be worth a try myself, that I first opened the door. I was acting on faith, perhaps, or speculation, or some crazy hope, or something, the night I first tried it, feeling foolish and hesitant, I tried praying, with all my heart, and got a real answer. Suddenly there was a feeling of peace and release, of happiness and understanding, that had not been there before. It didn't come from me. I knew that. It was something from outside me, and I was willing to suspend judgement on just what it was.

So I prayed more, and began going to church, reading the scriptures, etc., and each step of the way I saw more and more evidence. I received confirmation in my mind and heart, that this was good, that it was the right way, that I was on the right path. I gained knowledge that I couldn't have gotten on my own. Once I did those things, in faith, then I saw the results, and gradually gained a sure testimony and now what I have is something a lot more like knowledge, I guess. It's now something that's so familiar and sure, that there's no tenative feeling left. It's like gravity. Something you feel daily and recognize as a feature of life.

But there's a second meaning of the word faith, that I think I sometimes *do* have. It's a very powerful thing. When you exercise it, good things take form and solidify and become real in the world, that before were only odd notions, queer thoughts, or pie in the sky ideals. This type of faith is not supernatural or strange in the least. It's very ordinary and homely, in fact. This kind of faith is the willingness to invest your heart, mind, and effort, into something good, regardless of whether or not it has any chance of success.

Basically, all good things require someone to believe in them before they can be true. For instance, if a couple is in love, but neither of them is willing to invest real time and effort in their love, then their love will wither away and not exist. If, on the other hand, they move closer together, and think of themselves as “we”, and have faith in their love, then (if both of them do that) their love will blossom and thrive. The same is true for many other things, like currencies, companies, nations, laws, good engineering standards, friendships, etc. Only if people have faith in them, and act as though they are real things, will they survive and fulfill their goal.

I think that’s what Christ means when he says, “I see that your faith is sufficient for me to …” do whatever, bless people in some way. Unless we invest ourselves in Christ, and know that he’s a true and living God, then we can’t learn and grow, and he can’t bless us, as we could otherwise. It’s very ordinary and everyday, not supernatural or weird at all.

For instance, Sasha gets me to tutor him in physics and algebra. I have seen that he must have faith to be able to benefit from my tutoring. For when he doesn’t have faith, I will ask him a question such as “if you multiply this fraction by the same thing on top and bottom, are you changing it?” When he has no faith in me, he thinks “Why is she asking this? Let’s just work the problem! This is wasting my time!” and he's unable to learn. When he has faith, he can say “What do you mean?” and I answer “For instance, if you multiplied this fraction by 6/6 would you be changing it? Or would you still have the same thing you started with?” and then he answers "It's the same, because 6/6 is just another way of writing 1". Then I can go on to show him that the same thing is true if he multiplies the fraction by (T1*T2)/(T1*T2), or whatever, and bless him with that powerful tool for manipulating algebraic expressions. With the result that 15 minutes later he is beaming and excited because he totally understands now. However, without him exercising faith up front, this would never be possible.

Before the Civil Rights Movement, people like Martin Luther King Jr. looked at America, at the promise of equality and opportunity for all, and they had faith in it. They could have cynically thought "well, all societies in history have had their underclass. The ideal of America is some pie in the sky that can never come true. Equality is just empty talk" and if they thought that, then they would have either given up, or maybe tried to become the new ruling class, and subjugate whites underneath people of color, to even things out a little bit, historically speaking. They would have believed in that ugly world, and it would have come true. On the contrary, though, (and I honor them greatly for this) they *did* believe in America, so they were willing to work hard for it, and put their hope in it and risk their lives for it, and in the end they made it come true. Not perfectly, of course, but way way more than anyone could have hoped back in 1950.

I think when Christ asks us to have faith in him, he's doing the same thing I do with Sasha when I tutor him. He can't bless us and we can't benefit from what he has to offer unless we will exercise that faith up front.

Such is my faith, quotidian, plain, and dull. =) But it is the substance of which all the best things of my life are made.