© 2024 Mark Blackham
© 2024 Urantia Association of Quebec
Mark Blackham
Port Alberni, Vancouver Island
We often think of faith as a religious doctrine: the beliefs, rules, and rituals embodied in an organized religion, such as the Christian faith, the Muslim faith, or the Buddhist faith. Faith can also refer to different branches or sects of these religions, such as the Catholic faith, the Sunni faith, or the Theravada faith.
When used in this way, faith defines a system of religious rules, ideologies, and traditions. If you want to affiliate with a particular religious group, you must believe what they believe and do what they do.
But when faith is defined (or confined) in this way, it is not spiritually productive. Whenever we accept dogmatic teaching as the whole truth, it can inhibit our spiritual sensibilities; it can restrict our thinking and, therefore, inhibit our search for enhanced spiritual meanings or blind us to the full extent of spiritual realities.
Modern religion finds it difficult to adjust its attitude toward the rapidly shifting social changes only because it has permitted itself to become so thoroughly traditionalized, dogmatized, and institutionalized. UB 99:2.6
Faith is best defined as simply having complete trust in someone or something. It is a firm belief in something for which there is no empirical or objective evidence. For example, you might have a resolute faith in the triumph of science, or a persistent faith in the victory of your sports team. You cannot prove that an event will occur or that a spiritual force will act in your favor, but you have unequivocal faith that it will happen.
When my son was just a toddler, he wanted to climb up the chimney and over the fireplace (when houses had chimneys). Carefully, I stood him up on the shelf. He looked at me with a big smile, then burst into laughter, jumped off the ledge and rushed toward me with his arms wide open. I was stunned for a moment, but I caught him mid-flight.
My son’s complete trust in me—his unwavering faith that I would catch him in my arms—is the same deep, confident faith we have in the eternal love and infinite goodness of our Divine Parent. It is an uninhibited and courageous act of faith, totally free of any religious doctrine.
The faith you have in God is the same faith a child would have in the actions of a loving and wise parent. Accepting and believing that you are truly a spiritual child of God is an attitude of mind that underscores your sincerity and trust in the loving support and divine guidance of a caring universe. It is an attitude of mind essential to receiving God’s spiritual gifts. I cannot overemphasize the spiritual importance of such trusting faith.
Faith is a living and bold confidence in the grace of God, so sure and certain that a man could risk his life for it a thousand times.
— Martin Luther
While it’s easy to dismiss faith as false hope or belief in a fantasy, everyone believes in something—everyone has faith in something—otherwise we couldn’t begin to function in the world. We all operate within an ideological framework that we accept as true, and we all have strong beliefs about the true nature of reality, with or without proof.
If you are an atheist, you have faith that there is no God, even though you cannot prove it. If you are a humanist, you have faith in the inherent goodness of humanity, but you cannot prove it. If you are a materialist, you are convinced that all reality is material in nature, but you cannot prove it. You can have faith in anything you choose, so what will you choose?
Having faith in God means that we choose to have faith in the eternal goodness, infinite love, and wise guidance of the Holy Presence within us. We have faith that God will always help us in the long run, even if it doesn’t seem like it from our limited perspective, and even if we are not consciously aware of that help. Ultimately, we have faith in our divine destiny.
Even though faith implies that there is no empirical or objective evidence, the result of faith is firmly supported by subjective evidence. In other words, the proof of the power of faith is found in your personal spiritual experiences and in your relationships with others. Even though you can never prove these experiences to others, you know they are true.
For those who have faith, no proof is necessary; for those who have none, no proof will suffice.
— Thomas Aquinas
Confidence in spiritual faith is a personal experience best described as a positive and trusting attitude toward divinity. Instead of a formula of belief or a set of principles, faith becomes a state of mind in which we place an abiding trust in the existence of spiritual life, coupled with our strong conviction as to the goodness, wisdom, and love of this divine life.
A crucial point about faith is that God and His angels function most effectively through a believing, willing spirit. No spirit being, force, or influence will ever interfere with your free will. When you freely believe the truth about God, when you have complete faith in His love and help, you allow spiritual forces to participate in your spiritual life.
Imagine, accept and believe that God helps you.
— AK Mozumdar
Faith is a mental technique that brings you to the frontier of divine consciousness and then empowers you to enter that realm. It is a method used to transcend the limitations of reason and logic. Even more, it is a way of harmonizing your thoughts and behavior with divine truth, even if you cannot fully understand that truth.
Spiritual faith extends beyond any belief about the nature of material reality because humanity’s ideas about this vast universe are circumscribed and constantly evolving, just as scientific knowledge, social policies, and governments evolve: they are subject to constant change and renewal.
Faith therefore rests more reliably on supreme values and divine ideals rather than on religious doctrines or fixed opinions about physical reality. Whenever religious beliefs become rooted in perceived material realities or fixed philosophical ideas, they stagnate, whereas faith in the Divine is alive, vibrant, evolving and adaptable.
Faith is complete trust in the power and goodness of the Spirit and the firm conviction that you are always connected to that goodness.
— Wayne Dyer
The reason faith in the goodness and wisdom of an infinite and eternal Creator works for the best is that, in reality, God is always good and perfectly wise. For anyone who has experienced God’s presence in their lives, He is real, even a fact. Although our minds cannot begin to comprehend the full magnitude and magnificence of this First Source, we can still maintain an unwavering faith in the oversight of a loving, friendly, and caring Creator who always pushes us to be our best.
Faith is essential because your spiritual thoughts and ideals cannot soar higher than what you can imagine. Such faithful imaginings become your spiritual compass, the inspiration that invariably points you in the right direction, always leading you to accomplish much more in life. What a tragedy to limit your hopes and dreams to the dark confines of cold, empty, godless materialism. No wonder so many people imagine the future as a bleak and hopeless dystopia.
When you know that you are saved by faith, you have real peace with God. (UB 143:2.6)
A humble and positive faith is a tool of consciousness; a necessary and powerful spiritual attitude because it is a state of mind that opens the door to the Divine Presence within you. This, in turn, allows Spirit to release its beneficial and powerful superhuman activities within your consciousness. In short, a positive attitude of mind allows God to transform you spiritually.
¶ Faith is a bridge
Faith is a bridge to spiritual insight. You discern outward beauty with the physical senses and you discern truth in the intellect. But it is only through spiritual intuition that you can begin to fully grasp divine realities. Having faith in the goodness of your Creator, which is a truth, allows you to enter the reality of the spiritual realm despite the intellectual limitations of your mind. It is your ticket to divinity.
Faith creates a heavenly bridge between your material mind and the spiritual phase of existence, which is absolutely necessary for your spiritual progress because there is so much about spiritual life and the divine nature that your human mind simply cannot comprehend with analytical reason alone. Your material thoughts lead you to the door of the spiritual dimension but, from that moment on, it is your spiritualized thought channels, as defined by your faith and adjusted by your inner Spirit, that lead you to God.
Faith is believing what you do not see; the reward of this faith is seeing what you believe.
— Augustine of Hippo
It is what you believe rather than what you know that determines what you can achieve in life. All the knowledge in the universe will not help you be happy or progress spiritually. Faith goes beyond knowledge by embracing realities that you cannot (yet) understand.
Just as there are natural laws of science, there are supernatural laws of Spirit. One of these immutable laws is that neither God nor any of His heavenly helpers will ever try to change or recreate you without your explicit consent. The Creator of a universe wants you to come to Him, but only if you want to come of your own free will.
The Creator refuses to coerce or compel the submission of the spiritual free wills of his material creatures. (UB 1:1.2)
It is this realistic, humble attitude of mind that is so vital to your spiritual life, and it is the best approach to the magnificence and glory of an eternal and infinite God.
¶ Living faith
Faith begins with our unwavering conviction of God’s goodness, wisdom, and love, but genuine faith goes even further. For faith to reach its full potential and bridge the gap between the material and spiritual worlds and thus transform our lives, we must live our faith.
Spiritual truths acquired through faith become manifest in your life when you begin to put them into practice. The very concept of living faith is living a spiritual life with enthusiasm and happiness. It is living a life dedicated to the divine ideals and supreme values in which you so ardently claim to believe.
Spiritual harmony and divine unity cannot be achieved through the mind alone. While meditation and prayer are excellent ways to enhance spiritual perception and connect with divinity, they are not sufficient on their own. Only by sincerely practicing your faith can you coordinate and unite your energies of body, mind, and spirit. By practicing your faith, you actualize it; you make it a reality within yourself and on the world stage.
Living your faith validates your belief that you are a true daughter or son of a loving and compassionate Father-Mother God. Invigorated by the same faith, your convictions and ideals become realities in your life. This, in turn, opens the door to an even greater potential for spiritual awareness and spiritual living, which is further enriched each time you help others.
Convictions about God may be arrived at through wise reasoning, but the individual becomes God-knowing only by faith, through personal experience. (UB 102:6.5)
Living one’s faith is a divine privilege. It is a joyful endeavor carried out with enthusiasm and love; it is meeting daily challenges with vigor and inspiration; it is remaining undaunted in the face of all disappointments and failures; and it is cultivating an indomitable spirit that perseveres regardless of life’s difficulties and struggles.
4. Is *faith—*the supreme assertion of human thought—desirable? Then must the mind of man find itself in that troublesome predicament where it ever knows less than it can believe. (UB 3:5.9)
The consciousness of a victorious human life on earth is born of that creature faith which dares to challenge each recurring episode of existence when confronted with the awful spectacle of human limitations, by the unfailing declaration: Even if I cannot do this, there lives in me one who can and will do it, a part of the Father-Absolute of the universe of universes. And that is “the victory which overcomes the world, even your faith.” (UB 4:4.9)