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Hebrews 11: 29-12:2
Faith is a virtue because it makes a positive difference in the world. It is a theological virtue because it is a gift from God.
On the face of it, neither of these statements is true. First of all, many people make a quite credible case that faith doesn’t do good in the world—It’s actually the source of the world’s greatest problems. I don’t think any of us need to look very far to know how significantly faith contributes to the troubles of the world today. Including Christianity.
As to faith being a gift of God, well, lots of people have faith, and not all of them believe in God. AA talks about “God as you understand him,” and it could be Allah, the Emperor Hirohito, that chair over there, or even yourself.
Faith isn’t even limited to any kind of religious understanding. Scientists have determined that the average person is far more optimistic and hopeful about life than they have a right to be, given their circumstances. That’s faith, and it is faith one can have without ever believing God—it’s just a vague sense of well-being that gets us through life.
And this gets to why we claim that faith is a virtue. William Bennett writes that people of faith hold to the belief that “fundamental bedrock reality is both unified and good.”(1) This belief that reality is unified and good, he says, is the source of our ability to work for the betterment of the world, in spite of its overwhelming challenges, and he points to this as the source of what’s best in any religion. Ultimately it is our belief, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that being good makes a difference, and that being good is the ultimate purpose of life. So of course, faith is a virtue.
For us Christians, our faith is this: God loves us. God loves the world. God loves the world so much that God took human form in Jesus Christ, and lived, died, and rose again to demonstrate that evil and death do not have the final word in our lives or in history. This Jesus is Lord, and that means that ultimately love, goodness, and self-sacrifice are the true purpose of creation; and that by God’s grace, we can live like Jesus Christ in a deep relationship with God that enables us to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Jesus will return and establish love, goodness, healing, and oneness with God, creation, and one another forever. There, in a nutshell, is the Christian faith.
Saint Thomas Aquinas said that of the three Theological Virtues—faith, hope, and love—love is the first in order of importance, but faith is the first in order of occurrence. If we don’t have faith, he says, love and hope don’t come. He quotes a famous patriarch of the church who says, “Faith is the enduring foundation of those who believe, putting them in the truth and putting the truth in them.”
The ultimate issue of faith is truth. What is true in the world? What is its underlying reality? It takes us back to Pilate’s famous question to Jesus: “What is truth?” Perhaps he was being dismissive when he said it: What does it matter what truth is? Perhaps, though, he really wanted to know: What is truth, really? Can you tell me? That’s often how we’ve depicted Pilate in our mythology, as an earnest seeker of truth. Based on actual history, I would highly doubt that, but maybe he was. At some level, all of us are earnest seekers of the truth, trying to find the thing that will help us make sense of the world, a kind of unifying theory that explains why things are the way they are, and not only explains it, but explains where we fit in the big picture. We want a truth that will not only explain things, but give meaning and purpose to our lives.
Faith is about finding the truth that will order our lives and give them meaning.
Having said that, let’s address a common misunderstanding about faith. Faith is not the same thing as certainty.
Many believers in some organized faith, whether Christianity or any faith really, believe that faith is meant to counteract the uncertainty of life. They look askance at people struggling with questions or doubt. You have to be absolutely certain, or you don’t have faith, they tell us!
This is extremely important for us Christians. Faith doesn’t take away the mess of life. It looks at the mess honestly and unflinchingly. Faith isn’t faith if it flinches from reality. True, honest faith looks straight at the trouble in our world, and the trouble in our lives. If our faith is shaken by those troubles, that’s okay. As a pastor, I’ve had the good fortune to know a number of people of faith over the years, and here’s one thing they’ve all had in common: When they were in a crisis, and their faith was shaken, when they faced those inevitable times when the goodness and love of God were in doubt, they let reality re-shape their faith. They dwelt in the mess, the emptiness, and discomfort, and they found God was there with them; and so their faith was strengthened and changed and made new by their experience.
And that is why faith is not simply a virtue, but a theological virtue, and indeed a gift from God. The author of Hebrews calls Jesus “the author and perfecter of our faith.” What he means is that Jesus gives us the faith that we have—we do not generate it ourselves. But not only does Jesus give us our faith, He never stops giving us faith. The faith we have is never enough—it always needs to be improved, strengthened, tested, and renewed. And it’s Jesus who does that: He is always busy perfecting the faith we started out with. He never ever stops giving us faith.
So we do not have the power, nor the will, nor the responsibility to grow our own faith. Jesus does that for us. It is a gift.
That is a huge comfort, because it means it isn’t up to us to have the faith necessary to handle all the challenges of life. Think of it this way: if you’re trapped in a burning building, and there’s no way out, it doesn’t matter how hard you wish for it: if you aren’t a firefighter right at that moment, you aren’t going to become one. But in the distance, you hear the sirens and see the flashing lights getting closer; and you know that, if you just hold out a little longer, and you don’t panic and do something stupid, the real firefighters will come up that ladder and rescue you. That’s faith, and that’s the kind of faith we’re called to have in a crisis. It’s faith not in ourselves or our own strength, but in the good will and purpose of the God who can and does save us.
It’s important to understand that faith is a gift, particularly faith in the God of the Bible, in order for our faith to remain a virtue rather than a bane to society. Faith is never perfect: it is always being perfected. Sometimes we think we’re right when we’re wrong. Sometimes we think we’re wrong when we’re right. We aren’t perfect. And that’s the point. Because we aren’t perfect, we aren’t trying to shove our opinions down other people’s throats, or tell them how right we are and how wrong they are.
And faith is always changing. Sometimes people don’t like to hear this. But it’s true. Faith is a gift that Jesus is always giving us, and so we don’t do well to be unwilling or unable to change. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be cautious and test the spirits to see whether they are of God, as scripture says; but to believe that the way you believed in high school or college or ten years ago or yesterday has to be the absolute truth for all eternity is to resist the ongoing work of Jesus to perfect our always imperfect faith. We must have the faith to let Jesus test, change, and grow our faith—to let Jesus continue to give us this gift which gives our lives meaning and purpose.
Ultimately, though, when Christian faith grows, it only grows into a larger, deeper understanding of what our faith has been from the beginning. God loves us. God loves everybody. God took human form to show that love and to save us and the world. Jesus is Lord and that means love, goodness, and self-sacrifice are the guiding principles of history itself, and will ultimately win out. So whether you have the faith of a child, or whether you have the faith of the greatest theologians and saints in history, it’s the same faith, and it’s a wonderful, beautiful gift from Jesus, the author and perfecter of the faith of all of us.
1. Bennett, William. The Book of Virtues. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1993. P. 743.