Thinking about Faith
Saturday, June 7, 2025
I’ve been thinking a lot about faith—what it is, how it affects my life, how I express it, how to grow it—and I want to wrangle all those wild and scattered thoughts into something coherent, if not comprehensive. In other words, I don’t have any easy answers or even firm conclusions; I just want to understand where my brain is at, and writing helps me do that.
It has been said that faith is risk plus direction. I don’t know where that originated, but it’s pithy and all over the Internet. I think it may also be fairly accurate or at least thought provoking. What are some implications of that statement?
Faith doesn’t require certainty.
The communities I grew up in, with a few exceptions, taught that faith should be rock solid, and certainty was praised as a virtue. But if we are certain, we’re not acting on faith, we’re flipping a light switch. I don’t trust the switch to work, it just does, and I don’t even think about it. It’s a thing, a mechanical object, and I’m only ever surprised if it doesn’t work because that means it’s broken.
God isn’t a light switch. God is a person, albeit not a human, and our relationship with God is complicated. Our relationship to a light switch is simple—we flip it, and the light turns on. Prosperity gospels treat God as a slightly more complicated light switch, but in the end, a series of mechanical steps guarantees the desired result.
Our relationship with God is a conversation. We ask, and we may hear a response. We follow one path, and it may not work out. We explore more paths until we find one that does. We listen and search to discern if that path is good. There may be many good paths, not only one.
Most people in most times don’t hear the literal voice of God telling them to do one thing. Most people have to rely on their own judgement to choose a path, then see how it works out. And that’s the way it should be—God didn’t give us reason and wisdom only to rob us of our agency by dictating our actions. We have to learn to act well on our own volition, all the while listening for God’s still, small voice.
1 Kings 19:12-13 NIV After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
Or will that voice will be silent? There are differences between translations and even within the passage—the word of the Lord came to him, he heard a voice, God spoke to him, the angel of the Lord came to him in bodily form—it’s ambiguous how God communicated. Regardless, it’s clear God communicated in ways that Elijah recognized, from silence to mountain wrecking storm, but he needed to be quiet to perceive God’s presence.
Faith is not intellectual assent
Something else I learned growing up was that faith was all about having the right beliefs, where belief was synonymous with intellectual assent to propositional truths. No relationship with God was required, just a grasp of the right Bible facts (thank you, Heather Griffin). The weird thing about this is that, in my experience, Evangelicals are a herd of anti-intellectual swine. Scripture was far too generous, calling them lost sheep. They insist on beliefs that are contradictory and philosophically incoherent and refuse to examine them. If you’re going to center your theology around having the right beliefs, they really should at least make sense, but intellectual honesty was never their strong suit. Coming from a hyper-intellectual Reformed background, this drove me nuts.
Even if we accept Evangelical dogma, what good is it? James, the brother of Jesus, quotes the Shema, the most central belief in Judaism, and turns it into a first-century mic drop:
James 2:19 NRSVUE You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder.
tl;dr; You can believe all the right things, but if it doesn’t change your life, it ain’t worth bubkes.
Faith is trust in the reliability of the object of faith
There has to be a more graceful way of expressing that, but basically, faith in God means we trust God to do the thing—to answer our prayers, to make good on promises in scripture, to be good and loving. Trust in God implies letting go of our attempts at control, believing God will act. Letting go means God may act in ways we don’t anticipate or even don’t like, but we trust that those ways reflect the good character of God and are good for us.
My relationship with God is complicated and often confusing and messy. Currently, I’m not even sure God exists. Any belief I have in God is expressed in probabilities and metaphysical reasoning, and any actions I take based on that belief are unsure. I don’t even know how to know if God caused an outcome, and I certainty can’t predict with any certainty how God will act. The only belief I have reasonable confidence of is that God exists, and, given that and that good exists in the world, I have trust in God that he is good.
That said, I do have a relationship with God—a messy, complicated, confusing, and real relationship. It’s not what I was taught, but it’s what I’ve found to be true.
Faith is a willingness to act in uncertainty
Yup, this is the crux of the matter. Where the rubber meets the road. The real McCoy. I want to hear from God, I really do, but I don’t. Maybe I do, but I can’t tell.
Proverbs 3:5-6 NRSVUE Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
Well, what if my own insight is all I have? Thankfully, wisdom literature leaves some wiggle room, and I think the writer would be OK with relying on divinely matured insight. I don’t hear God whispering in my ear, but I’ve spent a lifetime absorbing scripture and wise counsel and working out how to live in light of those. And it has been working out—it often doesn’t come naturally, and I have to struggle to find murky answers. It can be intellectually and emotionally exhausting.
So, is that hearing from God? Maybe. It’s the best I’ve got, and I have to risk moving forward without certainty that it is God’s Will™ or that everything will work out. Uncertainty—isn’t that always the way?
Do I have a satisfying answer? No. Do I have a pithy answer? Why, of course:
The Man in Black said, life is pain. I say, life is risk.