Are You a Believer?

Faith Is Not Belief

“Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.” Kahlil Gibran

I've been thinking about faith lately, what it is, and what it is not, because for me, it's confusing. We've been taught, at least in the majority of Christian churches in America, that faith is a matter of believing in a set of tenets prescribed by orthodoxy. But faith and belief are not synonymous. The fact that you “believe” does not a Christian make. Belief is a passive thing—it requires nothing of me except that I hold these tenets to be true—Jesus was born of a virgin impregnated by God, walked among us as God incarnate, was killed for blasphemy, and that his death on the cross was for the sins of humankind, and further that he resurrected, ascended, and is the only path to God. If we subscribe to these tenets, then we have faith—I don't think so.

Faith is deeper than that—not seated in our cerebral cortex, but within our heart of hearts. It is an active verb. Jesus said so himself. If you love me, feed my sheep, release the prisoner, care for the stranger, walk an extra mile, give your cloak as well as your coat. Faith is not a thinking thing—it's a giving thing. Faith doesn't come from giving in order to gain righteousness, but in simply giving because there is need.

Faith is experiential. Sometimes, from the experience of being the person in need who receives at the hands of strangers, sometimes from the experience of having one's own compassion override all the signals of sensibility coming from one's brain. Sometimes, faith is doing what is right instead of following the rules. It is, to my mind, a paradox that faith can exist without belief in any prescribed set of tenets, and and belief can exist without faith. Faith requires an openness to God's guidance that all the beliefs in the world cannot fill.

                                               In the Spirit,

                                                    Jane