A little about faith

According to the author of the Book of Hebrews, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (11:1, KJV). Seemingly in line with the thought of this verse, oftentimes, I have heard the sentiment that faith is something that you just have against all odds, without the presence of evidence to support your hope or belief; that understanding or knowledge is antithetical to faith; that faith alone is about sheer grit of conviction in the absence of evidence–or even in the presence of evidence to the contrary. Faith is, to put it succinctly, “blind trust.”

We may think of trust falls, or a child with complete abandon launching into the arms of their mother or father. We may think of a chair and how we put so much trust in it, without even thinking about it, that it will hold up our weight. We may think of flying in an airplane or riding on a train or driving down the street. In all these instances, we are trusting that another will carefully carry us to where we need to go, that there will be no major hiccups, that others will abide by the rules of the road, that we will be held up or caught.

Such, many say, is “blind trust” or “blind faith”–faith that is not cognizant of its object, trusting all the way without relying on understanding or reason or good thinking to scrutinize the object of faith or to really understand that object. Some say that faith is held in spite of evidence to the contrary and even in light of such evidence.

But that is not what Hebrews 11:1 is saying. It is saying that there is something substantial, something evidential about faith, that it holds onto its object, who or what it believes in, no matter what–not because of some mystical or abstract understanding of the object of faith, but because of the faithfulness of that object.

How can an object of faith be faithful? By presenting itself as trustworthy over the long haul. When we find a chair to be trustworthy time and time again, we can be fairly certain beyond reasonable doubt that it will hold us up time and time again. The object of our faith is something we come to know over time and learn to trust so much so that we entrust ourselves to it repeatedly and on a regular basis.

Blind faith or blind trust is not an admirable trait, neither is it any good. This is because it does not truly know or understand its object of faith and so cannot fully or truly have faith in its object of faith; it is a partial or incomplete faith, not knowing the object of faith. To have true faith is to have a full faith, which is filled out by knowledge of the object of faith. When someone believes just to believe in something, they might as well be believing in anything at all, without discretion or discrimination, because to believe in something or someone without sufficient knowledge of that thing or person is without reason or with empty intuition to suppose that the object of faith is worth the trust given them.

Indeed, what happens when the chair does give way beneath our weight, or the plane does crash, the train derails, the stoplight malfunctions, the parent doesn’t catch us, or we are dropped by our partner in a trust fall? What happens when it all falls apart? Do we continue to have faith? Job says, “Though [God] slay me, yet will I trust him” (Job 13:15a, KJV). This kind of absolute trust in God, however, does not come from nowhere: Job had had years of knowing God, and it was on the basis of that experience that he trusted God, even in the midst of his dire circumstance. Faith is looking back on what God has done to prove himself trustworthy as we walk backward through the present into the future.

Faith is looking back on what God has done to prove himself trustworthy as we walk backward through the present into the future.

We need not blindly trust in or trust God, let alone anyone or anything else, for that matter, without having had a good track record with them or with it. That’s why it’s so important to build up trust in a relationship, so that we know with a reasonable degree of certainty that we can rely on that person or thing, especially when it might seem like we cannot. For example, when we are going through a challenging time, it may seem like those we once trusted are no longer trustworthy; but if we look back over the past, we might just be able to see the truth, that they are solid and firm, faithful and true.

Never doubt in the dark, what you have seen in the light. The darkness will play tricks on your eyes; shifting shadows and distorted streams of light will twist the reality you once knew in the brilliance of the noonday sun. Truth be told, though, we cannot let go of that which has taken hold of us by means of our certitude. What has taken hold of us? It is our understanding. While understanding can become enshrouded with confusion in the shadows of night, we can be certain that what we once knew so well and so long is still just as true now, in the midst of the darkness, as it was in the middle of the day.

There is an ancient idea so old that it is almost new, having been brought back from a time previous to our day, from Anselm in the 11th century to us today: it is faith seeking understanding.

Faith is not opposed to understanding; in fact, faith, true faith, which is not mere sentiment of an aspiration of a hope or a dream, is tried in the crucible, and found strong when it comes through the trials of fire, only strengthened and empowered–not in spite of the flames, but because of the flames and because of the truth of the reality experienced by the devotees to the object of their devotion. The truth of the reality of an object of devotion is proven true, solid, faithful in the midst of the fiery trial, and because of that trial by fire, the truth of the reality of the object of faith is made all the more sure and certain.

We might even say that one such devotee has lost their mind, to suffer so much, even the loss of life or health or happiness, for the sake of their faith and the object thereof. The fact is, however, that to have faith is not to lose one’s mind or one’s ability to reason: to have faith is to think most rightly and to reason supremely well. A person whose faith is firmly founded in the reality of what is right and true will find that they are thinking better and more reasonably than a person whose faith is firmly founded in some unreality or untruth. When we seek out the images of creatures or creation, when we look after the shadow of the image of the Creator, we only inherit shadows; but when we look to the substance of the image of the Creator, we find that we inherit the substance of reality.

There are some things worth more than our very lives. We are constantly in the balance, weighing ourselves, whether we should move toward this goal or aim or that one, calculating which way we should go, what will achieve us maximal happiness or comfort: even the person who is suicidal seeks this, for in the seeking of the destruction or obliteration of their life is the search for truth, significance, happiness, comfort. The one who truly has faith in God, though, has already found such happiness, so much so that they could be torn from this life, burned alive, cast into the fire, tormented and tortured, ripped apart by wild animals, impaled, what-have-you, and they would be all the more happy–not in spite of the torments but because of the torments, which proves their faith, and because of their faith, which empowers them to overcome.

A faith that is founded upon reality is one that seeks not mere blind adherence or devotion, but real understanding. A couple does not cease to enter into faith with one another after the vows are exchanged or the honeymoon is had, but seeks all the more to rise to the occasion of faith and faithfulness. So is the devotion of the devotee, seeking to grow in faith and faithfulness, to their object of devotion, to their God, their passion, their love.

Faith seeks understanding for the sake of the object of devotion, even as love seeks understanding for the sake of the object of its devotion, the beloved. As the lover seeks to know the beloved, so the devotee seeks to know that to which they are devoted, for faith is as love, with devotion and commitment and passion and desire for its object, even as love has for its beloved.

All this talk about faith and the object of faith presumes that the faith is in something true, real, of reality, and not a mere presumption or imagined reality. Faith that is in something unreal is not a faith worth having, as it provides only an unrealistic hope in something that will not pay out in the end or even in the interim or beginning: it will let you down.

That’s why faith must be faith in what is real and true. Imagine that you believed, that is, had faith, in something that wasn’t real or didn’t exist, like the Easter bunny. You wait and wait for the Easter bunny to come and give you chocolate eggs on Easter morning, but it never comes. You’d be waiting till kingdom come for that bunny to arrive, and it’d still never come, bearing its chocolate eggs. Now, if your faith was in Easter candy makers who wanted a huge profit on the Easter holiday, you might act a bit differently. Instead of waiting at the door of your house for the Easter bunny to arrive, you would probably head over to the local candy store and stock up on as much Easter chocolate eggs as you could find.

The difference is that when the object of your faith is real, your hope in it will not be deferred; and a “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12). The reason your hope will not disappoint is because it is based on something real. Faith for faith’s sake is no faith worth having; it’s like having a hope in something that’s never going to ever happen or come to fulfillment, like the Easter bunny bringing you a basket of chocolate eggs.