On Faith

 Faith. 

It's a very small word. Five letters. But for such a small word it has a big impact on, not just how I see the world around me, but how I live my life. 

The word "faith" stems from the Latin fides and the Middle English and Old French feid.[1]  The dictionary definition is given as "complete trust or confidence in someone or something." 

Confidence and trust. 

I remember many years ago, standing at the entrance of a long hallway. It was lit for some of the way but not right to the end. My friends, for I thought them "friends" at the time, were trying to convince me if I walked down to the end, into the dark, I would find something I would like. Some undisclosed treat, chocolate perhaps. [2]  I was not convinced. I didn't like the idea of exploring the unknown dark.

The question I asked at the time was “Why?” I was goaded by the impression my friends were holding something back. They had knowledge I didn’t. They knew what was at the end of that hallway, and I could sense from their demeanour it wasn’t something good. In short, I didn’t believe what they were telling me. 

My levels of trust in what I was being told were low. I wasn't the least confident that my "friends" were working toward my best interests. Whatever the joke was, it was to be at my expense. 

“You can trust us,” they said. No, I thought, I can’t. What’s more I don’t want to. What had entered our transaction was uncertainty. That uncertainty led to doubt, and that doubt was what glued me to the spot. I wasn’t moving. 

As we grow up we learn who and what we can trust and who and what we can't: Having a level of discernment is a healthy thing. In the final rub, I was required to have faith in them and what they were telling me, and I didn’t. 

Without realising it, I had been given a lesson about trust, about truth, about the nature of faith itself. I was not listening to what they told me was true, I was not buying into the reality they were spinning. I was listening to the voice of doubt in my heart that said to me, whatever they want you to do “don’t do it.” There was no evidence that my investment of belief in them and their version of the truth was going to pay off in any way. 

Later I came to realise that faith is about believing what is true, what is real, even when it can't be seen.

Thomas Aquinas defined truth as “conformity of intellect and thing.”[3] In other words, truth is the “matching together of both the understanding and the thing understood.”[4] What was at the far end of the hallway? I didn’t know. What I did know was that my friends were not giving me an accurate representation of the “thing” I might find there. They were misrepresenting the reality. I knew this because I had experience of dark places, and dark places made me uncomfortable. Part of faith, of knowing truth, is being comfortable and confident and trusting. [5] 

I did not know what was at the far end of the hallway: I lacked knowledge of it. I had no idea what was down there. But, as far as it went I wasn’t comfortable, I wasn’t confident and I wasn’t trusting.

This brings us to an interesting turn. In order to have confidence and trust, there must be the substance of “something,”[6] for us to have confidence and trust in. As far as it goes, it’s hard work maintaining a level of “faith” in something that as far as we “know” may or may not exist. Our faith has to be reasonable. 

Now, reasonable faith is reliant on the evidence given to support it. I can have faith in something as being true because the evidence for it is reasonable and acceptable. And yet, here, I am still talking about “things.”[7] And standing at the entrance to that hallway long ago, my lack of trust wasn’t in any “thing” but in a person (or persons in this case.) My confidence and trust was about “who” rather than about “what.” 

Alastair McGrath suggests that there are two senses to the word “faith.” First he sees it as “a set of beliefs,” secondly it is the “act of believing.”[8]  As I have suggested, the idea of faith is that there must first be something, or perhaps better stated, someone to believe in. 

Jesus, while he was here on earth, historically proven and as real, perhaps more real than any person who ever lived, provided us through his teachings, His signs and wonders ample evidence for our faith. During His lifetime, brief as it was, He was providing us the substance upon which to build our faith. 

If I may return to my memory, I think about the level of trust that was absent. There was no way I was going to say to any of my friends, “take my hand, lead me down the hallway into the darkness, I trust you, you would never see me harmed. All you have for me is eternal love. You only want good things for me.” 

There are very few people in this life I give such trust and confidence to: I don’t know them or believe in them deeply enough. But there is one who towers above any other and his name is Jesus and He is Christ. Standing at the entrance to that long dark hallway, it’s easy to think about reaching up and taking His hand simply because He knows what is there, in the dark, at the end. Even though I may be in darkness still and not know the way, He is light, and He knows the way. That’s the purpose of His love and that’s the reason for my faith: It’s a joining together in a fundamental, transformational relationship. Faith in action is founded in confidence and trust that Jesus Christ is everything Scripture claims He is. Faith is about accepting the claim. Faith is about saying yes to the reality proposed by the Word of God.

Faith is about investing your confidence and trust in Jesus and building your life on the firm foundation that gives you. Jesus gives us an illustration of this in the parable of the wise and foolish builders in Matthew 7:24-27. Our strength is not just in what is told but in Jesus who tells it: This is faith in action.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.” He was talking about that act of believing, the entering into relationship with the One who came to earth and died on the Cross so we could enter into that promise of salvation. 

Life as a Christian is about trust and confidence  in someone who is so much greater than we are. Paul Coelho puts it aptly when he says: “None of us knows what might happen the next minute, yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have faith.” 

When I talk about “faith” I am talking about moving forward, taking Jesus’ hand, and walking with Him in full, complete and total trust and confidence of His reality, of His substance and in full knowledge that He loves me, and wants what’s best for me regardless of what I might find at the end of the hallway.

Amen. 

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[1] Oxford Living Dictionary, online at https://www.lexico.com/definition/faith

[2] I am not sure how they expected me to believe there was chocolate or anything beneficial at the end of the hall in the dark. As I found out later the hallway ended in a small alcove which was full of bits and pieces of mannequins; dismembered some headless, enough to frighten the wits out of any young boy who might venture down into the dark. 

[3] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1.16.2

[4] Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, 1981. P586.

[5] John Bishop, "Faith", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), online at  https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/faith

[6] Hebrews 11:1 is often quoted as being a solid definition of “faith.” The verse is: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things seen.” (KJV) Other translations render the word “hypostasis” - substance -  as “assurance,” (ESV) or “confidence.” (NIV) It is worth noting that hypostasis as substance links in well with evidence we find in things we don’t see. This is where the idea of reasonable faith enters the fray.  

[7] I think it goes without saying that in everyday life we put our “trust” in things as a general rule, we trust that bridges won’t collapse, that phones will ring, that the sun will rise, etc. This is based on evidence of experience, we have come to know that we can rely on these things to act and behave in certain and specific ways. 

[8] Alastair E. McGrath, Theology: The Basic Readings, 2018: 26.