Monday 10 November 2014

Meditation: FAITH and/or BELIEF? by John de Gruchy

FAITH and/or BELIEF?

Hebrews 11:1-8
"By faith  Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out...not knowing where he was going."
The fundamental fact of our existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living.  It's our handle on what we can't see.  The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.
(Eugene Peterson, The Message, Hebrews 11:1)

Harvey Cox,  an American who has been in the vanguard of Christian thinking over the past half-century, recently published a book entitled The Future of Faith.  Like his other writings it is lively and thought-provoking.  One of his key themes is that there is an important difference between "faith" and "belief,"  though we often confuse the two.  Faith, he reminds us, means putting our trust in something or someone and  no one can live a truly human life without it.  Faith as trust is fundamental to human existence and relationships, to scientific enquiry and living hopefully.  And. for Christians faith as trust in God is fundamental to our existence, "the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living."   

Belief, by contrast with faith as trust, has to do with what we believe to be true.  Such beliefs are expressed in theories and ideologies, creeds and doctrines.  Christian belief in certain doctrines such as "God is love" is the basis for our faith in God, it is the basis for our trust in God.  But belief in the doctrine is not the same as putting our trust in God.  Believing the doctrine does not mean you live its truth.  Not everyone who talks the talk actually walks the walk, as the saying goes.  I warmly agree with Harvey Cox in distinguishing between faith and belief, but I think he separates them too much.  Faith is fundamental, but doctrine is necessary for faith.  I know the word doctrine puts some people off.  Just give me simple faith, they say, and you can get rid of all the dogmas associated with it!  But that is being rather silly and short-sighted.  Doctrine simply means "teaching,"  or the truth by which we try to live.  Just as everybody has faith n something, so everybody lives according to some doctrine or other, vague or precise, simple or complex in expression or lack of it, as it may be.   Yes, everybody,  from fundamentalists to secularists, Marxists to Nationalists,  newspaper editors to rugby coaches -- all live and act according to some doctrine, whether they call it that or simply speak about a conviction, a truth,  or a game plan.  Even to declare that God does not exist is as much a doctrine as to believe in God.

Yes, faith and belief are not the same but they are linked together.  As we read this morning in chapter eleven of the Letter to the Hebrews, that great passage on the heroes of faith, those who trust in God must first of all believe that God exists!  We would not put our trust in someone who is not real, even though by definition God is a mystery beyond our comprehension and not, as some think, a bearded elder sitting on a throne beyond the clouds.  Our trust in God is based on the belief that there is far more to life than we can touch or see, that we live, move and have our being in a power that is greater than we can imagine.  But we would not put our trust in this "almighty God," as the Creed puts it, if we did not also believe that God is trustworthy or, as Eugene Peterson puts it, God "cares enough to respond to those who seek him."   That God is real and that God cares for us like a "Father and Mother" are beliefs on which we base our trust.  So the fact that faith in God and believing certain doctrines about God are different, does not mean that they are disconnected, or that what we believe about God is unimportant.   It makes a huge difference whether we believe that God is love not hatred, forgiving not vengeful, the God of all humanity not of some people only, the creative source of all life in the universe who cares for the cosmos, not a remote deity aloof  from the processes and dynamics of life in all its dimensions.  Faith or trust in God is premised on the belief that God is worth believing in, which is, of course, what worship is about.  Acknowledging the worthiness of the God we trust.

But, to return to the distinction between faith and belief,  because we believe certain doctrines to be true, it does not mean that we automatically live according to them.  There are doctors who know that smoking causes cancer but still smoke.  There are politicians who believe that corruption is wrong, but who nevertheless commit fraud.  There are ardent Marxists, who drive top of the range BMWs.  And there are Christians who believe God is love but, when push comes to shove, are racists, vengeful, bigoted and just plain nasty people.  So Christian faith is more than a set of beliefs about God, it is an act in which those beliefs become a way of being human, a way of living.  "By faith  Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out... not knowing where he was going."  That is how the Bible describes what it means to trust in God, and why Abraham is traditionally regarded as the father of faith in God for Jews, Christians and Muslims.  What counted was not that he believed that God existed, but that he trusted this God with his life.  It was Abraham's faith in action, so the Bible tells us, that really counted in his relationship with God and others.  

St. Paul, building on this story centuries later, said that we are all justified by that kind of faith, and much later "justification by faith" became the basis for Martin Luther's reformation movement in the sixteenth century, the founding  doctrine of Protestant Christianity.  The problem was that in due course many Protestants assumed that if they believed in the doctrine of "justification by faith" they were "justified by faith."  Faith and belief were conflated.  Abraham believed in God, to be sure, but what justified him was not his belief but the fact that he lived his life on the basis of trusting in God. After all, as Jesus said, even the devil believes in God, as do the vast majority of people living in the United States so the polls tells, and I guess the same is true in South Africa.  But that does not mean they all live their lives trusting God, or trusting God more than they trust the "mighty dollar" as the words "In God we trust" printed on each note suggest.  So listen again to Peterson's translation of our text:

The fundamental fact of our existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living.  It's our handle on what we can't see.  The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.

Living by faith in the trustworthy God is not always easy, it does not come without a struggle against doubt and despair, not knowing precisely where we are going and how we are going to get there, but such faith is the faith of Abraham and the heroes of faith through the centuries, and it is this faith that sets them "above the crowd."

John de Gruchy
Volmoed   6th November 2014


YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN THE ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW.



ON READING AND UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE
A WORKSHOP LED BY JOHN DE GRUCHY
Many people have difficulty in reading and understanding the Bible.  This is not surprising, because the Bible is a very complex book made up of many different parts.  After all, it was written in several languages and composed over more than a thousand years.  No wonder scholars spend a life-time trying to understand it!   Yes, it is true, the core message of God's grace and love for us can be understood by all of us.  But the story of the Bible, made up of many, many stories and types of literature is often beyond our immediate grasp.  So I will be offering some help to those who are interested in getting to know the Bible better.  In February 2015 for two consecutive Wednesday mornings we will explore the Bible together:
              Wednesday 11 February:  9.00-10           How we got the Old Testament
                                                                        Tea
                                                              10.30-11.30  How we got the New Testament
              Wednesday 18 February:  9.00-10           Jesus and the Four Gospels
                                                                        Tea
                                                              10.30-11.30   Reading the Bible today

Please join us!  But let the Volmoed Office know as soon as possible. (admin@volmoed.co.za) To cover costs we are suggesting a R 100 donation.  In the meantime I commend a very good, at time hilarious, book which you can get on Kindle:    Peter Enns, "The Bible tells me so."




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