What Is Faith?

Do you trust your worldview like you trust the road system. If not, why?

Trust always produces action. You are comfortable enjoying the convenience of your automobile because you are persuaded it’s safe to do so. Your persuasion isn’t a mental state. It’s an understanding that you act on every time you drive somewhere. When you do, you “live your faith.”

There is a bizarre categorization of truth being attempted by our postmodern culture. Moral, religious, political, social, economic, and even quasi-biological “truths” are widely held to be constructible. Many in our liberal societies think they are free to perceive these topics any way they like. But they also expect to have their subjective perspectives validated by everyone else. This chaotic and compulsory open-mindedness is widely celebrated as “progress.”

Progress toward what exactly?

What good is “your truth” if you can’t share it with anybody. And why isn’t there a social-justice movement demanding a formal integration of postmodern ideals with the road-system? If “right” and “wrong” are constructs, aren’t “right” and “left” constructs too?

Why does “truth” with kinetic consequences get a postmodern hall-pass?

Let’s dial down the danger and notice that we don’t permit truth-construction, not even in matters of taste or convenience. Imagine for a moment that you’re at your favorite lunch-spot. You’re hungry and order a bacon-double-cheese-burger and a chocolate shake—extra thick. These items are featured on the menu with appetizing photographs, and mouth-watering descriptions like “tender,” “juicy,” and “rich.” You give the server your order, and your mouth waters in anticipation of your mid-day feast. Moments later, your server returns and sets a plate of baked kale chips and a green-smoothie in front of you.

If this illustration offends your taste, just flip it around.

Instead, imagine you ordered a “fresh” and “crispy” kale salad and a “vitamin-rich” vegetable smoothie packed with fiber and antioxidants. But you were given a fat-encased hunk of bloody carcass, and a belly busting carb-bomb as a chaser.

The obvious point is that you have your preferences; you shared them with your server; and they chose not to share that meaning with you. After all, who are you to mean what you say? Who elected you “God”?

You spread your hands and give the server a “hangry” look. They confidently return your look, move their hands in that obnoxious “6-7” gesture, and say: “What’s your problem? This is what you ordered.”

Now, do you have a meaningful reason to complain to the manager? Don’t answer at once. Sit with the question for a sober moment, because the implications of your answer are important.

Note this well. Your complaint will only be meaningful if your worldview equips you to judge that a cheeseburger and kale-salad are different facts; and to judge that confusing a cheeseburger for a kale salad represents a person’s disorientation to the truth. Because the truth of the matter isn’t relative. Authentic meaning is stable and objective. That’s why you trusted your server to understand your order in the first place. And it’s why you’re justified to hold them accountable when they don’t.

Facts are the way things really are. Truth is perfect information about the way things are. It is a sharable fact that “kale” and “cheeseburger” aren’t English synonyms. Any reasonable customer should be able to trust any competent food-server to know the difference. Indeed, the function of human society depends totally on our capacity to share meaning in mutual trust with each other.

Ask yourself: Can I trust my worldview to integrate with a lunch-menu? If you can’t, why trust it at all?

Ask yourself: Can I trust my worldview to integrate with the road-system in the real world? Perhaps you should confess that deep down you know objective truth is real. It’s why you’re not dead or in prison.

Ideas matter. Don’t believe in what you know ain’t so. It’s bad-faith.

If any of us are to live meaningful lives, then Meaning has to be real and trustworthy. Since we are stuck with faith of one kind or another, we can only avoid bad-faith by adopting good-faith. We all bet our lives and eternities on something. Even if you bet on “nothing,” you still have to trust your understanding and hope you’re right.

The big question is: Am I making a good bet?

It might be a good idea to examine the table and notice your position relative to the Dealer. You should calculate your “pot-odds” on the basis of that position, because it’s a life and death game you find yourself in, and wager you must. It isn’t optional. You are embarked. You’re “all-in.”

A trustworthy faith must be a meaningful faith. The mission of good-philosophy isn’t to seed doubts. It’s to foster good-judgement so we can pursue meaningful lives in a community where we share understanding of the way things are. But who ultimately decides?

This is where things always get tricky (See Plato). We can’t judge rightly without understanding. And we can’t have understanding without a Perfect-Account of the Truth. Whether we like it or not, we are stuck with sharing trust in the a priori reality of Meaning. Let’s recall our preliminary facts.

Fact 1: You exist. This fact is undeniable, because to deny it you must exist.

Fact 2: Meaning exists. This fact is undeniable, because to meaningfully deny it, Meaning must exist.

Fact 3: Since you are not the eternally perfect ground of Meaning, there must be a bridge between things as they really are, and the world of your perceptions. Since you undeniably exist, and Meaning undeniably exists—the reality of the Cosmic-Bridge is also undeniable.

We can’t see the Logos in a Petrie dish. But without Him, we can’t see anything at all. HE IS the Light of the World. Meaning is a packaged deal. You can take Him or leave Him. Either way—it’s an act of faith. Exodus 3:14; John 8:58; John 14.

Perhaps it will help to notice that you already trust immaterial meaning absolutely. You even demand the same understanding and trust from everyone else in your community. Don’t think so?

Observe:

The number 4 has never been produced or observed in a laboratory. Even so…

4 (4 + 4) = x. 

Is the solution 20 or 32? Let’s say I owe you x-dollars. If I prefer the number 20, can I construct that solution? Of course not. The jots and tittles of math-law actually matter. There is an objective “order of operations” that compels me to start inside the parentheses. To find the truth, the immaterial law of mathematics must be followed. Note well that math is not a cultural construct. We might disagree about which side of the road is the “right” one to drive on, but nobody questions the due-amount of a loan payment.

‘x’ is a math-fact. It’s the way things really are. Only one version of x is perfect information about the way things are. Only an accountable understanding of the truth of x counts as math-knowledge. And the ability to share your knowledge of x with your neighbors through mutual trust makes life in a community possible.

In the absence of “good-faith” you can’t balance your checkbook, obey the speed-limit, or order a dozen doughnuts for the sake of being popular at the office. Faith involves sharing an accountable understanding of the way things are with your neighbors. This law holds whether you are sharing meaning with your bishop, your baker, or your stock-broker.

Your reality isn’t exclusively “yours” because you constructed it. It’s yours because you stand in relation to Meaning through good-faith. Remember that you can’t have a friend without also belonging to your friend. Neither can you have a reality without also belonging to Reality. The substance of that mutual belonging is called faith.

It is the reality that you hope for, and the evidence that you cannot see.

Are you living in “good-faith?” Many interpretations of reality can be excluded as viable candidates simply by asking the begged-questions and judging the truth-value of the answers given by measuring them against Meaning.

A good-philosopher continually asks these preliminary questions:

Does my faith integrate with itself (Is it logical)? 

If your worldview fails this challenge, you should abandon it and start fresh. Nobody should trust in something that violates the law of non-contradiction. There can be no hope in trusting ideas that cannot be meaningful. Religious worldviews, even nominally Christian ones must not be given a hall-pass on logic. Either The Truth is consistent for everyone—or there’s no such thing.

Does my faith integrate with the known facts (Is it plausible)?

If your worldview stands in stubborn opposition to reason and evidence, you should abandon it at once. Nobody should trust in ideas that wage war with the world as it really is. Scientific worldviews must not be given a hall-pass on moral-facts. We live in a morally significant universe. This is self-evident and beyond the boundaries of empirical inquiry. The “naturalist” should either abstain from using moral language, or they should abandon naturalism as an explanation of moral-facts. Because the emergence of Meaning from non-meaning is the definition of implausible.

Does my faith integrate with the world beyond myself (Is it shareable)?

Life on your own is impossible. You depend on the resources of the world, and on the support of your neighbors. Existence in the absence of communion is quite impossible. You can deny this fact all you like, but you will prove it by doing so. There is no private interpretation of reality. If you can’t share your meaning in mutual trust with others—then “your meaning” isn’t Meaningful.

Does my faith integrate with life in the real world (Is it livable)?

Meaning stands as a general-witness to the basic intelligibility of the cosmos. As human thinkers, we have undeniable access to an infinite set of a priori facts. As shown above, mathematics is proof enough that this is the case. We also have basic access to facts of logic, proposition, language, and morality. Note well that it is impossible to get any meaning from Socrates, Scripture, or Scientific American if our basic framework for meaning isn’t already up and running.

Our understanding of the world is like a jig-saw puzzle. We are born with an open field of potential knowledge, and with the “Image on the box” continually seen in our parents. As we grow, we will lay down the corners, establish the edges, and then progressively fill in our understanding of humanity.

The Truth is necessarily fitting. We all recognize it because it slides easily into place to complete a part of our growing world-picture. Mistakes occur when we try to force a piece of information into a space where it just won’t go.

Because Meaning IS, there are some things the Bible just can’t mean. If the Bible asked us to believe in a square-sided circle, it would disqualify itself as a trustworthy source of truth. The Bible doesn’t establish meaning. It transmits meaning into minds where meaning is designed to fit. When a person’s understanding cannot fit, then their understanding isn’t true. Eliminating the logically-impossible takes us a long way toward understanding difficult passages. C.S. Lewis noted that meaningless statements don’t become meaningful when we place “God can” in front of them.

Also, there are real phenomena that the empirical world can’t reveal. For instance, the reason honest observers are indispensable to the scientific project. Honesty is not a wave, particle, fundamental-force, or theoretical element of quantum mechanics. Honesty is a virtue that stands between persons who share faith with each other, and bad-science happens when honesty gives way to hopeful expectations and the chance for more grant money.

A livable faith is one that integrates Truth in a fitting way. It doesn’t pretend that things fit where they obviously don’t. Too many of us believe in what we know ain’t so.

That said, even our good-faith isn’t perfect. No mathematician can count to infinity. No scientist can move beyond probability. No philosopher can comprehend the True and the Good. No artist can exhaust the expression of the Beautiful. And no theologian comprehensively knows God.

We see through a glass dimly—all of us do.

Our world-puzzles are incomplete, and they all stand in need of some revision. Good faith is the adventure of continual growth. It is definitely not the crumbling throne of dogmatic certainty. Like Odysseus, we’re trying to make our way home, and it’s a perilous journey. There are a lot of monsters to deal with, and we can’t ignore them and sail safely by.

A good-philosopher recognizes this and takes it seriously. Unlike the fundamentalist, a good-philosopher knows that they haven’t arrived. They know that we are all orbiting Meaning together, even as HE holds things together for us to know. Each and every one of us has this in common. When we enjoy communion with Meaning and learn something new, our mass of knowledge grows, and we are drawn into a closer orbit to Reality as HE really is—and to each other.  Colossians 1:15-23

The mission of good-philosophy is a mission of hope—an accountable hope that one day we will finally make it home. That one day our puzzle will finally be complete. That one day we will cross the ultimate horizon and finally come face to face with Meaning as HE IS.

That one day In Him, we will finally know and keep faith with ourselves.

1 Corinthians 13.