If you are into spirituality, you probably have turned your back on the concept of blind faith, where you believe all sorts of absurd things just because the church tells you to. I know I have a negative reaction much of the time when I hear the word “faith.” Indeed, my attitude is often that I don’t believe in faith. Yet at the same time, I realize there is an important place for it. It is certainly a major theme in A Course in Miracles. So in this post, I would like to explore what the legitimate role of faith is.
Let’s begin with the definitions from Merriam-Webster:
1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty
b (1) : fidelity to one’s promises (2) : sincerity of intentions
2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs <the Protestant faith>
If you look at these definitions, faith is obviously more than belief without proof. It is also loyalty, allegiance, fidelity, and trust. What is the essence of all of the definitions? I would say it is “remaining loyal to something in spite of impediments.” Therefore, faith can mean “I will loyally hold to this belief in spite of there being no proof for it” (2b(1) above). Or it can mean “I will stay loyal to my promise in spite of all the things the changing winds of time may bring” (1b(1) above).
Defined in this way, I can see a legitimate and vital place for faith, even in terms of “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” We can think of that legitimate place as a healthy balance between two extremes. One extreme says “I will firmly believe in this thing, despite its evident absurdity and the complete lack of evidence for it, just because my church told me to.” This obviously leads to some pretty awful places, such as, “Yes, of course dinosaur bones were planted there by the Great Tempter, to deceive us into disbelieving the Bible!”
But the other extreme is also undesirable. It says, “I will only believe in that for which I have direct, personal, experiential proof right this second. I won’t take your word for it. I won’t take anyone’s word for it. I won’t even take the word of my own past experience. I need to have direct experiential certainty of it right now, or else.” Clearly, we don’t want to go to that extreme, either.
So what’s the healthy middle? I think it’s something like this: “I may not see it right now. I may not have proof. I may not have direct experiential certainty. But I still have genuinely sound reasons for believing this, in spite of not seeing it, in spite of uncertainty.” Those “genuinely sound reasons” can be all sorts of things: logic, physical evidence, spiritual experience (your own and that of others), confirming results, life experience, trusted sources, etc. Hopefully, it will be a mixture of a few of those, maybe all of them.
An uncontroversial example involves the presence of minds in other people. The fact is that we can’t prove that minds exist inside their bodies; it’s really an article of faith. So a statement of that faith might go like this: “I may not see it right now. I may not have proof. But I think there really is a mind, a living consciousness, inside your body (or, if not literally inside, at least associated with your body). In other words, I can’t actually prove you are not an automaton, but I have sound reasons for believing you are genuinely conscious.”
The Course would have us take this one step further: “I may not see it right now. But I think your nature is actually pure and sinless, in spite of what appears to be evidence to the contrary. I may not see your sinlessness directly now, but I have genuinely sound reasons for thinking it is really there. In spite of impediments, then, I have faith in you.”
In fact, this is probably the main emphasis on faith in the Course: faith in our brothers. Such faith is a huge theme, one that is featured all the way from Chapter 17 to Chapter 22 in the Text.
Interestingly, faith in our brothers incorporates all of the meanings of faith we saw at the beginning: loyalty, allegiance, fidelity, and trust. If I have faith in you, I am loyal to you. I remain firm in my allegiance to you. I demonstrate fidelity toward you. I trust you. And I believe in you.
What this faith amounts to is: I believe in something truly good in you, in spite of impediments to that belief, in spite of active evidence to the contrary. And because of believing in that goodness in you, I trust you—I believe that your effect on me is ultimately beneficial. And I remain faithful to you. You have my allegiance and loyalty.
So when we think of faith, let’s not think of blind faith in religious doctrines for which there is no evidence. Let’s instead think of faith in our brother—believing in the goodness in him in spite of impediments, and therefore remaining faithful to him in spite of all the things the changing winds of time may bring.
That is a faith I can believe in.
——————–
If you enjoyed this article, you might like this one!
To learn more about our community of A Course in Miracles students, visit Course Companions.
