Faith - Beyond the Power of Reason

The classic definition of Christian faith appears in 11th chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Many Christians draw a distinction between 'natural human faith' and 'faith in God'. The former includes things like faith in natural laws such as gravity and inertia, so that we can assume that they will not suddenly stop working, causing us all to fly off into outer space. And we trust that vegetables and animals and even, to some extent, human beings, will grow and behave in accordance with these natural laws.

But Christians believe that faith in God is a gift from God. So far as I, an outsider, understand it, the central requirement of becoming a Christian is to have faith in the fact the Jesus is your Saviour, who by his death on the cross somehow atoned for the sins of humankind, and enabled us to be reconciled to God. This was an unmerited gift from God, made by His grace, and the human part is to accept it with gratitude, and try to be worthy of it. It is not a path that most Unitarians can take.

And yet, Unitarianism is often spoken about by Unitarians as a "faith" rather than a "religion". In his book The Unitarian Life, Stephen Lingwood calls us "a faith community for those on a spiritual journey, for those who believe there is still more to be discovered in religion. We believe in religious exploration - through the intellect and through the spirit. Through the intellect we explore religious questions in sermons, lectures, workshops, and dialogue. Through the spirit we explore through worship, music, ritual, meditation, and prayer." 

I rather like his distinction between intellectual and spiritual exploration. For me, having faith involves trust, whether it is the "natural human faith" mentioned above, or faith in Someone or Something beyond the natural world. It is not the same as belief, which you can do with your intellect. It is not by accident that people speak of "a leap of faith" - it involves jumping into the unknown and trusting that you will be caught. As in the Martin Luther King Jr. quotation above. "Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase." Yes.

I appreciate that many Unitarians would not agree with this view, as they do not believe that there is Someone or Something beyond the natural world. But faith is, by its very nature, beyond the power of reason, something that can only be discerned with the heart, not the mind alone. And on those grounds, I, an individual Unitarian, have faith in the divine, the numinous, the sacred other.

What Is This "Human Nature"?

Some people find the bad things that human beings do very easy to explain. It’s all to do with “original sin”.  Many Christians believe that when Eve tempted Adam to eat that famous apple in the Garden of Eden, and God expelled them from Paradise, the result was that all humans are fated to carry the burden of that sin in perpetuity.

 In his fascinating book The Unitarian Way, Phillip Hewett speaks of “the outlook of those forms of religion that lay heavy stress upon the depths of depravity to which human nature can sink – an outlook illustrated classically in the words of the Westminster Confession: ‘we are utterly indisposed, disabled and made opposite of all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.’” I would imagine that if you have to repeat those words (or similar sentiments) in church every Sunday, it would be difficult to have a hopeful view of the potentialities of human nature!

And if you look at any newspaper, this pessimism may seem to be justified. Or is it just that decent behaviour seems less spectacular and is less often reported? Perhaps the reason for this is because we instinctively expect such behaviour, and therefore feel it unnecessary to call attention to it? Perhaps this is more a Unitarian view of human nature. I believe, as many Unitarians do, that every human being has a divine spark, "that of God" within us, which can guide us to do good, if only we will listen.

As I see it, our job as Unitarians, as human beings, is to be constantly aware of the “divine influences” around us, in the world, in our fellow human beings, and to recognise that there is that of God in everyone, and that we are all connected to each other, on a very fundamental level. If we approach life and our relationships to the rest of humankind with these thoughts in mind, surely we cannot write humanity off as evil or depraved? I think that we have to believe that there is good in the world, and that we can help to make it a better place. Otherwise, what is the point of living?

Another way of putting it is to agree with Phillip Hewett that “Unitarians are committed to an affirmation of life in face of all life-threatening forces [and] a hopeful belief in the potentialities of human nature.” If we believe that Life with a capital L is fundamentally good (although our individual lives at any particular point may be fairly horrible) and that all human beings have the potential to be good or evil, then we must commit ourselves to doing our best to live our lives as well as we can, in accordance with the best we know, and to make our lives and the lives of those we touch as good as we can. This is what being part of a Unitarian community is all about.

This is not to say that there is no evil in the world. But I think that we have to believe that on an individual level, each person can choose whether to behave in a good or evil way, and that most human beings would instinctively choose to behave in a good one, left to themselves. It is when humans allow themselves to be influenced by others to commit evil acts, or believe evil things, that problems start.

I think we have to accept that the polarity between what we call good and what we call evil is present in every individual, as well as in humankind generally, but that it is up to each one of us to make a conscious effort to choose the good over the evil, and to make of our lives a greater whole. This might be easier to do if we understand how our human nature works. And fundamentally, it works through our relationships with and reactions to other people, and other living beings, and events.

Unless we walk through life with our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts shut, we will inevitably be influenced and changed by the actions and words of people with whom we come into contact, whether it is a casual encounter in the street, a member of our family, or of our spiritual community. And by things we see, and by things which happen to us. And of course our actions and words influence everyone else. I suppose another way of putting it would be to quote John Donne’s famous meditation:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, … any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” 

So what should we as Unitarians do about it? We are all human beings, we are all members of many communities – our families, our friends, our colleagues, our church – and we are all members of the human race. What difference can we, as individuals, make to those communities? We need to be aware that we are in a living relationship with the rest of the world, and that our words and actions can influence the fate of that world and its inhabitants, our fellow human beings, not to mention all the other living things. Whether our influence is for good or ill is up to us.

The Spirit: "That Of God In Everyone"

I love Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's words: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." With the Quakers, I believe that there is a part of each of us that is more than human, a divine spark reaching out to the rest of the universe and to God. Some Unitarians believe in the Holy Spirit as “the active divine presence in individuals and communities, as the divine breath that gives us life, as … the divine mystery moving among us and within us as we work and worship.” 

 The belief in God as the Spirit working through human beings is one which many Unitarians, including myself, are increasingly warming to. While we may have rejected the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient God, we still believe that God definitely exists, as that "active divine presence" that Cliff Reed refers to.

Many, of course, do not believe in any divine being at all, and so will not agree with my belief that the Spirit does dwell in each one of us, in our hearts, waiting to be listened to. I love Quaker Stephen Allott's description of the Spirit: "What manner of spirit are we of? have we any connection with the spirit which descended on the upper room, sounding like a 'mighty, rushing wind'? Do we look to be swept out of our comfortable existence by an invading power which comes, as Jesus said, no one knows whence? Or do we look rather for a gentler movement within? Do we say, it was this Spirit of God which breathed into our human clay to make us living souls? It is there, in our humanity, but mixed with passions which confuse its purpose, limited by the tunnel vision of the self. Occasionally a blinding flash may come from without and someone is jolted forwards; but the Spirit's normal method is a quiet insistence, a still small voice barely audible amid the turbulence of earthquake, wind and fire."

Two lines of this particularly speak to me: "it was this Spirit of God which breathed into our human clay to make us living souls" and "the Spirit's normal method is a quiet insistence, a still small voice barely audible amid the turbulence of earthquake, wind and fire."

"It was this Spirit of God which breathed into our human clay to make us living souls." This is something I have come to believe in the last eighteen months or so, through reading the works of the great Celtic poet and theologian, John O'Donohue. He wrote, and I have come to believe (because it makes sense to me) that our souls come from elsewhere, and inhabit our human bodies, and go elsewhere after death. Our souls are animated by the Spirit - it is the Spirit that enables us to respond to the divine in the world.

One of the most obvious ways in which the Spirit works within us is when we respond to something beautiful. I am sure that you have felt your heart lift and your levels of joy soar when contemplating a majestic mountain, or the endlessly changing sea, or the intricacies of a flower, or a man-made work of art, or the face of someone you love, or when you are listening to uplifting music or the songs of birds or to a beloved voice. I believe that this is the Spirit within us recognising and responding to the beauty of the world around us.

How can we learn to listen to the Spirit, and to recognise her at work in the world? I think that this may be attempted by what I would call 'sacred living'. The Christian author John Macquarrie believes that we live in a sacramental universe. Rather than the Divine presence being limited to either two or seven sacraments, Macquarrie believes that God has so arranged things that the material world can “become a door or channel of communication through which he comes to us and we may go to him." For this reason, “man’s spiritual wellbeing demands that he should recognise and cherish the visible things of the world as things that are made by God and that provide access to God.”

In other words, God / the Spirit / the Divine other is present everywhere, all the time. The trick of sacred living is recognising this.

Connecting With The Divine

When Alfred Hall wrote his book Beliefs of a Unitarian, he included three sections on prayer. He explains that "prayer is the response of the soul to the call of God; it is our answer to God's movement towards us and within us. ... Unitarians have had experience that prayer helps to bring them into right relations with God." 

Today our denomination is much more diverse. So it is not surprising that a wide variety of spiritual practices are used by Unitarians in order to connect with the Divine. While this certainly includes prayer, particularly during worship, there are now many other ways in which Unitarians open themselves to the Divine.

These include meditation of various kinds - mindfulness meditation, breath meditation, walking meditation, singing meditation, to name but a few; Taizé chanting; Dances of Universal Peace; journalling; walking in nature; lectio divina; participation in engagement groups - the list is endless. Events such as Hucklow Summer School or Festival of Unitarians in the South East (FUSE) provide Unitarians in the UK with the opportunity to  sample different spiritual practices, until they find one or more that suits them.

Gems for the Journey was the title of a Summer School workshop which I attended in 2009, led by Rev. Linda Hart and the late (and much missed) Patricia Walker-Hesson. Over the six morning sessions, participants learned about different spiritual practices which might help them on their journeys. I discovered that using prayer beads really resonated with me, and have used them ever since.

A couple of years ago, I visited a number of places in which different spiritual disciplines were practiced, using a wide variety of "gems". My husband and I went on a 'mini-break' in Somerset, visiting Wells on the first day, staying overnight, then visiting Glastonbury on the second day. Wells Cathedral was a wonderful building, with its facade of golden stone, and famous scissor arches holding up the crossing tower. They obviously have some very talented embroiderers, because there were a series of beautiful altar frontals, one for each season in the Christian year, one draped in front of the altar, and others in display cases on the aisle walls. They had clearly been stitched with love and devotion.

As this was an Anglican cathedral, I was quite surprised to find a series of wonderful modern icons by a Bulgarian artist depicting the Stations of the Cross, which had been presented to the Cathedral a few years ago. The colours were like jewels, bright and vivid. There was also a larger icon of Saint Andrew, to whom the Cathedral is dedicated. It seems that images are becoming more accepted as an aid to devotion in the Anglican church.

On the second day, we visited Glastonbury. It was a lovely crisp Autumn morning, so we decided to climb the Tor first, which has been a destination for pilgrims for millennia. The view from the top was spectacular, but the peaceful atmosphere was somewhat disturbed by the fact that some horticultural work was being done, using a noisy machine to turn the earth over. We then visited the Chalice Well Peace Gardens, which were very beautiful, and then went down into the town to see the Abbey. Now a ruin, it must have been splendid in its day - as long as any of the great cathedrals in France, if not as high. I bought a beautiful olive wood chalice in the Abbey shop, just big enough to hold a tealight - another gem for the journey.

The rest of the day was spent exploring the alternative culture that dominates Glastonbury's shopping streets. There were dozens of shops dedicated to spirituality of all kinds, offering the spiritual seeker as many gems as there are journeys - statues of the Buddha, and the Hindu god Ganesh, actual gems and crystals of all shapes and sizes, Wiccan and Pagan artefacts, Celtic crosses, and much material about King Arthur, for Glastonbury has a strong association with him. Even in the Abbey ruins, there is a place which marks the putative grave of Arthur and his queen, Guinevere. There were also several amazing bookshops whose contents covered all aspects of new age spirituality, and many places offering healing and therapies of various kinds. It was fascinating.

These days reminded me again that there are as many ways of walking the spiritual path as there are people to walk it, and that each is valid to those who follow it. The important thing is to realise that we are all fellow pilgrims on this journey through life together, and that we need to show love and understanding to each other, not fear and intolerance. There is room for us all, regardless of which gems we use to guide us. So long as the outcome of the journey is to make us kinder and more tolerant, rather than the opposite.

Note: some of this blogpost has been published before, over on Still I Am One, in October 2011.