Photo: Window at Clonmacnoise Monastery, Co. Offaly, Ireland
In his book Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer, Irish poet David G. Benner writes “Too often faith is reduced to beliefs. But cognitive ascent to propositions has very little to do with genuine faith, which is more a posture of the heart than of the mind. Faith in God is leaning with confidence into God. (page 32)”
I spent years “trying to think my way to God.” That doesn’t work. In 2016, I had a re-conversion experience in which I felt God’s love for me; my faith moved into “a posture of the heart” that I had been trying for years to experience (my faith story is told in more detail here.).
So, how does one move from merely “reducing faith to a set of beliefs” to faith that is experienced and lived? A few thoughts:
- Certainly, a living faith does necessitate religious learning. Who is God? Who are we in relationship to God? What are the precepts of a life of faith? Individual faith traditions provide such instruction. It is then up to us to allow these precepts to move into our being and to incorporate these precepts into our lives (i.e., incorporate these ideas into how we relate to God, relate to other people, and live our lives).
- Faith is experiential: a relationship with God. Faith becoming experiential involves doses of grace, surrender, prayer, and love. Living faith is made possible through grace given to us by God (in the Christian tradition, this grace is conferred upon us beginning with baptism….and then grace continues to show up at other times when God knocks on our door). Our portion of “doing faith” – what David G. Benner describes as “leaning with confidence into God” – requires surrender and prayer. Surrender is an emotional giving up, ascenting to allow God to take the driver’s seat in our lives. Prayer is where we participate in a relationship with God. Rather than prayer being a uni-directional monologue of us talking at or to God, prayer is relational and interactive. In prayer, we both communicate to God and receive the presence of God (analogy: our relationships with the people in our lives are likewise interactive rather than uni-directional). I write more about prayer here. The fruits of grace, surrender, and prayer become “the fruits of the spirit” listed in Galatians 5:22-23: “”love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
- We live our faith through how we live. Growing into being a person of faith involves allowing our inner work of faith (grace, surrender, prayer, and resulting love – listed above) to direct our being-ness in the world. A life of faith is absolutely about our own relationship with God, but it is also essentially more than that – life isn’t just about us personally or about our own relationship with God. We are here to be of service to all of God’s children. Everyone is a beloved child of God, our lives are measured to the degree that we move into loving God’s children in thought and deed. Living our faith is about “love God and love your neighbor” (Matthew 22: 36-40) and applyin the precepts of one’s faith tradition (“The Golden Rule,” “Christian charity,” etc.).
Faith is more than a set of beliefs – it is how we relate to the divine and live among God’s children. Acts 17:28: “It is in God that we live and move and have our being.”
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog post, please share it with them (thank you!).
