The author of the Christian New Testament Letter to the Hebrews wrote that faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The author did not mean to say, as present-day critics allege, that faith is “belief without evidence.” The modern wedding of faith (confidence in someone or something) with belief (intellectual assent to a specific proposition) creates a very odd couple indeed. This wedding has given birth to a good deal of confusion.
In Christian theology, God is transcendent. Whatever god is, god is utterly other. Religious communities have long insisted that any god who smells of anthropomorphization is certainly an idol.
In fact, many traditions (including deep and wide strata of Christianity) tell us God is mysterious and unknowable; therefore, “propositions” are the last thing that faith in God would involve.
Faith is not belief. It is unfortunate and misleading that the word “believer” has become synonymous with “person of faith.”
So, we are not iconoclasts when we say that intellectual consent need only be given to credible propositions, nor are we irrationalists to count ourselves part of a faith community.
The two terms “faith” and “belief” have become universally mistaken for synonyms partially because of the rise of fundamentalism. This has led to problems.
When religious beliefs are immune from all criticism even in the face of human rights violations and/or overwhelming evidence to the contrary, then there is something very wrong with our notion of what belief is.
Recently there was a story in the news about a Muslim woman who was raped and then thrown in jail for adultery. She was released due to pressure from the global outcry against this injustice, but only after it was made clear to her that she was expected to marry her rapist. In other news, a local church refuses membership to a newly married interracial couple. Besides these examples from this week’s news, we hardly need to mention the taboo against teaching evolution, the greatest scientific insight in recent history, to our children.
In short, people are afraid of such things as evil spirits, the afterlife, and homosexuals, not because these fears are sacred tenets of the literal Truth revealed from heaven, but because these fears were already prevalent in our cultures. Truth has nothing to do with it.
It is, of course, imperative to be sensitive to cultural differences, and to be civil in public discourse, but the fact remains that people of faith everywhere resent it when religious belief is used as a ticket for a free ride on the crazy train.
All beliefs are assailable.
There is no going back to a world where truth can be (or ever could have been) handed down from heaven. This may be a threatening prospect for dogmatic belief, but not to a robust faith.
There is no going back to an intolerant world. And by the same token, there is also no room for a world where every unjust practice must be called acceptable simply because “that’s the way we do it around here”. There is a difference between offending my personal sensibilities and offending against human rights. Everything, including our dearly-held worldviews and philosophies, must hold up to scrutiny—the scrutiny of a global village.
Faith must find its expression peaceably in a postmodern and tolerant world. And, call me crazy, but perhaps the limits of this toleration can be located somewhere shy of the systematic oppression of minorities and patently unsubstantiated assertions about the age of the earth.
Religion must take its place among the humanities, most of which have already found their seats next to the sciences, and all must add their voices harmoniously to the anthem of the preservation and furtherance of peace and human dignity. All other things worth singing about are variations of, or conditioned upon, these themes.
