June 29, 2006
My “faith” issue
Faith is, well, a matter of faith, isn’t it? Faith by definition requires a leap, doesn’t it? One isn’t required to have faith in the proposition that oxygen is required for human life, because that requirement is demonstrable. One isn’t required to have faith in the proposition that water flows downhill: it’s likewise demonstrable. Faith is a holding on to, an acceptance of the reality of, something which is not demonstrable, right. Or as the writer of Hebrews would have it, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Now despite the fact that those two phrases have interpretational difficulties of their own, they would seem, at the least, to point toward the idea that “faith” and “facts” aren’t the same thing. Why then. . .
. . . do so many American Christians feel the need to assert their faith as a given, as a “fact”, as an undeniable reality? To say that they take their faith, for themselves, as undeniable reality, is one thing. But this is not what so many do. Instead they assert that their faith is fact. They wear T-shirts, or put bumper stickers or faux-license tags on their vehicles, that state “Jesus Is Lord”. When someone says, “Jesus is Lord,” he is not stating a principle of his faith: he is asserting something as a fact. If he were to say, “Jesus is my Lord,” he would be making a faith statement, a statement of personal religion and philosophy. And no one should object. But the statement that “Jesus Is Lord” is a challenge, and a rather arrogant one at that. It’s an exclusionary statement; a slap in the face to those who have chosen as their Lord Krishna or Buddha or Rama or Ahura-Mazda, as well as to those who have no faith at all and to Jews and Muslims who believe it is blasphemy to claim that any fleshly being can be Lord.
Is it insecurity that causes these rather belligerent pronouncements? Or is it simply another emblem of the “American national character”, which demands that everything which is not American be second- or third-rate?
I remain puzzled.
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2 Responses to “My “faith” issue”
Sometimes it helps me to (pretend to) believe that it is, in many cases, simpleminded exuberance that motivates these pronouncements, the same sort of drive that causes a seventh grader to insist that “Korn rules!” and those who don’t agree eat wang sandwiches willingly.
I think a lot of people have no real concept of the meaning of faith– they actually hold their religious views as a matter of fact. I am alternately exasperated and frightened by these people.