I sometimes wonder what would have been my journey if I had
taken the other fork of the road? I am
not being flip. I assume that we all
have come to numerous forks in the road.
We have to choose and when we do choose, heading down one particular
way, we know the other road at the fork that we did not choose is lost to
us. We will never know what life would
have been like if we had chosen that other road. I don’t lament lost choices. I don’t regret any of my choices---although
they certainly have not all been good choices!
But I do wonder.
One of the good choices I made was to continue being a
reader. Clearly there were choices in my
life, where if I had made them, would effectively have meant that I would have
quit reading. Oh, that does not mean I
never would have read anything. There
probably are many jobs that people do that entail no reading. But most people working those jobs are
literate. They can read.
They have to read to pass the driver’s test and get a
license. They have to read enough to
order from a menu. They may read the
sports’ page---but less necessary in our ESPN world! They might read a book to their little
child. But reading is not something they
would choose to do. And certainly, they
would not do it for fun.
I am different. I am
a reader. I love to read
newspapers---even the newspaper that you literally hold in your hands and,
sometimes, get ink on your fingers. I
read magazines and Twitter. I read
online. I read things that seemingly
have nothing to do with my life or my job.
Maybe that is the source of some new ideas.
I like to read things that turn out to be surprising. Recently I read an op ed piece in a famous
national paper. I recognized the
author’s name, T.M. Luhrmann. I
remembered that she is a professor of anthropology at Stanford. I also recall that she has just written a
book based on her observation among evangelical churches. The title of her op ed was “Belief is the
Least Part of Faith.” I was hooked and
read on.
Essentially, she distinguishes faith and belief. Given my job as spirituality professor, that
was not new. Quickly, I realized she was
more focused on faith and thinks faith is primary; belief is secondary. I would agree. But I liked even more how she was developing
her thoughts. Her argument is not based
in heady scholarship, but rather based in the life experience of folks she has
observed and whom she has come to know.
That makes sense to me.
One thing she noted interested me. She says, “you can argue that religious belief as we now conceptualize it is an
entirely modern phenomenon.” That
probably is quite true. She continues by
citing one of my graduate school professors---famous, but now deceased. She writes, “as the comparative religion
scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith pointed out, when the King James Bible was
printed in 1611, ‘to believe’ meant something like ‘to hold dear.’
She continues by
quoting Smith: “’The affirmation ‘I believe in God’ used to mean: ‘Given the
reality of God as a fact of the universe, I hereby pledge to Him my heart and
soul. I committedly opt to live in
loyalty to Him. I offer my life to be
judged by Him, trusting His mercy.’ Today
the statement may be taken by some as meaning: ‘Given the uncertainty as to
whether there be a God or not, as a fact of modern life, I announce that my
opinion is yes.’” These are significant
words from an old friend that are really words about faith and not belief. Faith is a bet with my life. Belief is cognitive principle. There is a difference.
I like how Luhrmann
talks about faith. She says, “it is
more helpful to think about faith as the questions people choose to focus on,
rather than the propositions observers think they must hold.” I very much like the idea of faith as
questions. For example, I might say that
I believe in God, but it could very well make no difference in how I live
life. On the other hand, to have faith
in God is to begin living life “faithfully.”
Belief affirms that
there is a God. Faith seeks to involve
that God in my life and attempts to live my life following the Divine Desire
for me. And my faith journey is enriched
if I can find a community of people also living out of their faith. They might say a creed to affirm their
beliefs. But more powerful will be their
communal effort to know God, love each other as their selves.
And in the best
scenario, they are willing to try to love their enemy. If they can begin to pull off that feat, they
will become transformers in this world.
In this sense they will participate in the building of the Kingdom about
which Jesus spoke. This has a great deal
of attraction to me. I want to have the
faith to be part of the process.
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