2009-09-13 Are Faith and Belief the Same?

Scriptures: Deuteronomy 4:32-40, Hebrews 10:32 – 11:3

Are faith and belief the same?  Well, you already know that if the answer to that question is “yes” there’s no sermon, and we might as well get to Congregators and all that great food 20 minutes earlier today.  Obviously, I think there are differences between these two central ways of looking at what it means to be a Christian.  And it seemed to me that with this being the start of a new program year as we begin with the sacrament of communion that it is important to look at some basic elements of our Christian commitment.  So, here are my quick definitions of these two terms:  belief is the intellectual agreement we give to something we hold to be true – because my thinking and my experience tell me something is authentic, therefore I believe it.  Faith is a condition of who I am – my emotional, intuitive, physical self – it is an act of will which affects the whole of my life.

Now, your first blush reaction may be that this is simply theological hair-splitting.  What difference does it make to draw a distinction of this sort?  Does it really matter whether you or I say “I have faith”, or “I believe”?  Doesn’t this amount to the same thing in the long run? No, the difference is more crucial in terms of the way we live our lives than it might seem at first.  It is possible to believe something is so and not be particularly motivated to do anything about that belief.  For example, most everyone today would say, “I believe the world is round”.  Fine.  So what?  Having said this does not particularly motivate us to do anything about it.  Even if you or I wanted to become an astronaut, I doubt that the smallest part of our motivation would be to discover if this belief we take for granted were really so – to see that the world was really round as we looked at it from the sky.

And unhappily, this is where many of us get hung up as Christians.  Despite our increasingly secularized society, most recent surveys still show that most Americans are believers in God or some sort of divinity.  But when pressed there is that tendency to say something like, “Oh, of course, I believe in God, but….”  In that eloquent “but” lies the antithesis of faith:  “But I do not really want to help my neighbor; but I cannot give to help the poor; but I cannot take a stand for justice; but I’m not really interested in learning about what it means to be a member of a church.”

What’s also unhappy is that the church has often encouraged this kind of thinking by putting a premium on belief.  The kind of evangelism which seeks a conversion on the basis of “Repent and believe in Christ” has very little to say about the content of faith.  Somehow it becomes all right just to profess a belief in God – or, for that matter, a belief in anything:  the virgin birth, the authority of the Gospels, the bodily resurrection.  To believe in these particulars has become more important for some Christians than to have the kind of faith that changes lives.

That’s rather strange when you come to think about it.  But, on the other hand, it’s not so strange when you look at the sweep of religious history. For the ancient Israelites it was inconceivable to disbelieve in the existence of God.  To try to talk about God as not existing would just be garbled nonsense.  Oh sure, at times a kind of practical atheism drifted through the Israelite community, but this was the sort of thought which said that God was not present, was not actively involved with the people, not that God did not exist.  Such a “practical atheism” is what the Psalmist is concerned about when that writer says in Psalm 14, “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God’”; or also in Psalm 10, “In the pride of their countenance the wicked say, ‘God will not seek it out’; all their thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’”  The Hebrew word which is translated as “fools” in Psalm 14 is nabhol, which is closely related to the word nebhelah, meaning “corpse”.  In fact, nabhol (or “fool”) was only applied to a living thing when it was potentially dead anyway.  So, the self-centeredness of one who proclaims that God is not present marks that person as one who is dead inside, who has not accepted the living and present Lord.

For Israel the question was never one of belief or unbelief, but rather it was one of faith and its effectiveness for individuals and the community.  The God who is continually present is thereby greater than all the gods of the nations.  God is revealed to Israel, and the only meaningful response was to give the whole of one’s life.  Even though God is invisible, God has been “seen” – that i we read from Deuteronomy:  “To you it was shown so that you would acknowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides God.”

What we are experiencing in our own time as we head toward the end of the first decade of the 21st century is a crisis of faith, not of belief.  It’s all too easy to say, “I believe in God, or “I believe in the Great Something Out There”, or even with Linus “I believe in the Great Pumpkin”, and let it stop there – relegating faith to a non-essential part of our lives, the one-hour-a-week variety of faith.  I used to hear street kids say, perhaps slightly irreverently, “You have to get in God’s face”.  That’s exactly what faith is pushing us to do.

At the UCC General Synod that Jim and Ann and Kay and I attended the last week of June one of several marvelous speakers was Krista Tippett who has a regular radio program on American Public Media called “Speaking of Faith”.  I was somewhat amazed and pleasantly surprised that her subject was exactly appropriate to this sermon.  She began by saying that faith is more about questions than answers.  “Faith’s territory is the drama of life,” she went on.  “It is not to be found in formal statements or creeds [that is:  belief] but in that part of life that is intimate and personal.”  In other words, how a person lives out their life is the key to faith.  “While our culture denies suffering and frailty, our faith looks for expressions of hope, passion and creativity.”  “We need,” she concluded, “a new generation of people who work out their understanding of faith in the midst of their lives.”

“Hope, passion and creativity.”  Discovering those in your life is what it means to live a life of faith.

After the time of Jesus a Greek intellectual influence was added to the simplicity of the Hebrew faith.  In the book of Hebrews, which may have been the last book of the New Testament to be written, this Greek influence is particularly strong.  The book of Hebrews begins by complaining about the lack of faith on the part of the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness, tracing this back to their “unbelief”.  But then the author must deal with the question, “What is faith?”  And finally, the author of Hebrews comes to this fascinating formula:  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

“The assurance of things hoped for” is a faith in the God who rules over the future.  It includes the sense that everything which is done in the here and now relates to the there and then.  “The conviction of things not seen”, on the other hand, speaks of a kind of intellectual assent – of, as the hymn-writer puts it, “believing where we cannot prove.”

“The conviction of things not seen” – BELIEF – that second part of the author of Hebrews’ formula – that’s what became more significant for Christians after the time of Christ.  The church patriarchs, with their carefully worked out systems; Anselm and Aquinas with their “proofs” for the existence of God – these later Christians, influenced by Greek thought, were saying, basically, that if we had “the conviction of things not seen” then “the assurance of things hoped for” would follow along in the natural course of events.

But of course today we know that it’s impossible to “prove” the existence of God in any scientific sense.  Moreover, the Holocaust and the threat of nuclear war and HIV-AIDS and those terrorist attacks eight years ago call into stark question a simple belief in a God of justice and mercy.  Surely, surely, “the assurance of things hoped for” goes deeper than simple belief.  And we are helped here by the author of the book of Hebrews, for that author echoes our 21st century doubts and fears of persecution in speaking to the early Christians who were also persecuted:  “But recall those earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes being partners with those so treated…. But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.”

Yes, it’s true now even as it was then:  faith does lead to suffering and abuse, because we live in a world that is largely indifferent to real faith.  The world – our secular society – can easily tolerate belief.  Belief is looked on as a private matter – something between an individual and his or her God.  But faith – faith which drives us to commit our lives in service, to seek justice, to do the deeds of mercy, to gather in communities to express this faith in the teeth of a world gone mad and materialistic, to seek for hope and passion and creativity – this faith is nearly incomprehensible to secular society.  It is, as Paul puts it, “a stumbling-block to Jews and folly to Gentiles”.  Faith ultimately draws us to trust in God, not to believe in God; for by trusting God we really are in God’s face, in a response of surrendering discipleship, rather than living at God’s back by simply saying “I believe” and letting it go at that.

Are faith and belief the same?  Of course not.  But you already knew that.  The key question, as always, is what are you or I going to do about it?  If our faith is an active trust in a God who is alive and living in us, if our faith pushes us to “get in God’s face” and not stay at God’s back, if our faith prompts us (in Micah’s words) “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”, what does that mean practically and concretely for the decisions that you and I make every day?

Are faith and belief the same?  Of course not.  For belief in God or in any particular set of doctrines is but a prelude to a faith in which living religion encounters the living God.  As we live with this kind of faith – this kind of trust – we will be open and vulnerable.  But no matter how intense our struggles and set-backs may be, we will discover through our faith not only “the conviction of things not seen” but also, and so much more importantly, “the assurance of things hoped for”.

Amen.

Dave Pomeroy

Are Faith and Belief the Same? (Deuteronomy 4:32-40, Hebrews 10:32-11:3)

Deuteronomy 4:32-40

32 “For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of. 33 Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live? 34 Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? 35 To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him. 36 Out of heaven he let you hear his voice, that he might discipline you. And on earth he let you see his great fire, and you heard his words out of the midst of the fire. 37 And because he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power, 38 driving out before you nations greater and mightier than yourselves, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is this day, 39 know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. 40 Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.” (ESV)

Hebrews 10:32-11:3

32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, 33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. 35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. 37 For,

“Yet a little while,
and the coming one will come and will not delay;
38 but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.”

39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 For by it the people of old received their commendation. 3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (ESV)

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