A "Faith" for Everyone

Faiths are different. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daosim, Confucianism, Sikhism, Jainism, animism and others -- and the variants of these, sometimes numbering into the hundreds -- are all different. This is unavoidable. Religious diversity does raise some problems and challenges for us, but addressing those problems calls for learning how to accept -- and if possible celebrate -- differences rather than suppressing or erasing them.

So when I say, "a 'faith' for everyone," I do not propose to lay out some common core that all, or most, religions have, or should have. Instead, I urge a way of understanding what faith is. This understanding may be shared by everyone, regardless of their faith.

Thus, atheists, too, have (or, as I shall suggest, "do") a faith -- though atheism is not it. Atheism rules out certain faith traditions, but does not itself constitute a faith. In the same way, "non-model-airplane-builder" rules out a hobby but does not itself constitute a hobby. But while a person may not have any hobbies, everyone has/does a faith. The faith of an atheist may not have a name -- but ze does have/do one. Like any faith, it may be weak, middling, strong or any gradation thereof. It may not, however, for a functioning human being, be nonexistent.

Faith is:

1. Committing to the fullness of our being;
2. Opening our hearts to the unknown;
3. A way of interpreting existence.

Before I unpack these, I need to acknowledge a common cultural conception (that is, a conception of what "faith" means that is common in English-speaking culture). According to this conception, faith is a non- (or perhaps ir-) rational conviction of the truth of certain propositions for which the evidence is nonexistent or, at best, weak.

You may want to argue that the meaning of the word is determined by the way that most people use it. So if this conception is indeed common -- if that is the way that almost everyone understands what the word "faith" means -- then that IS what faith means. We can't very well go around employing new and different definitions of words if we expect to be understood when we speak.

In fact, though, people commonly do associate faith with rather more than simply "believing without evidence." Faith is imagined to be personally transformative, to bear some relationship with transcending ego-centric desires, with enabling us to face life's uncertainties and unknowables, and with how we make meaning of our experiences and our lives. These are widely understood functions of faith. Let us understand what faith is by its functions. Whatever, then, serves these functions -- whether it also involves believing without evidence or not -- deserves the name of faith. Let us now take a closer look at each of these functions.

First, as Virginia Knowles writes by way of describing the thought of Unitarian theologian Henry Nelson Wieman:

“Religious faith is the act by which we commit ourselves with the fullness of our being, insofar as we are able, to whatever can transform and save us from the evil of devoting ourselves to the transient goods of social success, financial opulence, or even scholarship or beauty or social concern.”

This fits the traditional understanding that the outcome of faith is personal transformation and transcendence of ego-centric desires. This important function may be served without any non- or ir-rational conviction that flies in the face of evidence. Faith is a name for whatever it may be that commits us to the fullness of our being rather than the limited and narrow parts of our being concerned with what Knowles and Wieman call "transient goods."

Second, American Buddhist writer Sharon Salzberg describes faith as "the act of opening our hearts to the unknown." This fits the common understanding of distinguishing faith from reason and evidence. While reason and evidence tell us about what we can know, faith is an approach -- specifically, an open-hearted approach -- to the unknown. Rather than merely believing without evidence, however, faith is a willingness to go forward to take in new evidence and new experience, ever-willing to be transformed. This throwing ourselves into the unknown can feel like leaping -- hence, "leap of faith."

"Faith" names the antidote to ego preoccupations with achievement and with knowing. Faith is the courage to offer up all that we are to the world around us, not knowing what the world will ask or what we will find in ourselves to offer. Faith's opposite is not doubt, but despairing withdrawal.

Third, from theology professor James Fowler: faith is “a way of knowing, construing, and interpreting existence.” This preserves our very common sense that Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. are faiths. They each know, construe, and interpret existence in a particular way.

The common conception of faith as a set of unshakable convictions impervious to evidence does convey, for all its misdirection, one implication that is true: evidence alone is not enough. Evidence is not the same thing as meaning and does not suffice for meaning. Mere phenomena present us with “a blooming, buzzing confusion” (William James) until interpreted, contextualized, made sense of. Animals -- most notably humans -- must make meaning from the raw phenomenal evidence. There are many various ways to put the same evidence together into a structure of value and meaning, and each way is a faith.

Faith is best understood not so much as something we have or lack, but as something we do and sometimes fail to do. We "do faith" when we commit to the fullness of our being, with hearts open to the unknown and minds engaged in meaning-making.