Common Christian Misconceptions: Faith

Welcome, dear reader, to the beginning of a new column. As a simple Catholic layman, my hope is to help others gain a deeper understanding of the Christian faith. The primary goal of this column is to challenge common misconceptions surrounding the faith and to tackle the supposed “difficulties” that the Christian faith has head-on. Ideally, I would like this column to be bi-weekly, but knowing myself all too well, this may very well be a monthly column. Hopefully, I am able to incite thoughtful and fruitful discussions—and perhaps even encourage some to reconsider Christianity in a new light. I truly appreciate all who take the time to read what I have to say. Happy reading and may God bless you all.

Faith: Essential or Trivial?

What does it mean to have faith? Is it irrational? Unreasonable? Or maybe it’s just outdated? For much of society, “faith” conjures up thoughts of blind belief,  much like a child’s belief in Santa Claus. It is a term burdened with negative connotations, often met with hostility and resistance—but is that really fair?

Those bold enough to even admit to having faith are quickly dismissed as hopeless fools, not to be taken seriously. This kind of vitriol we see among many today, particularly the youth, toward those who have faith stems not only from a distorted view of faith itself but is also fueled by a desire to justify and persist in perverted behavior. Here, however, I will focus solely on the first point.

Many would have you believe that having faith is nothing more than belief in baseless, unsubstantiated claims; that it is to accept the things for which there is not the slightest evidence, or to embrace the ideas that are subject to ridicule. Simply put, they perceive faith not as something rooted in reason, but as a consequence of Christianity itself. And who can blame them for this misunderstanding? Even Christians themselves seem to have no clear sense of what faith truly is. 

I often encounter fellow Christians who are prompted by the question, “What does faith mean?” or, “What does it mean to have faith?” The usual rejoinder I hear is that faith is hope in God, or believing without seeing, or even that it is a feeling or intuition. Sometimes, the person will simply dismiss the question altogether. All these responses—and the many others that have been given to the question of faith—share the same pitfalls: they either deflect from the question, prove to be inadequate as explanations, or are simply riddled with errors or contradictions.

So, what is faith then? To answer this question it helps to distinguish between two senses of the term: faith in the ordinary, natural sense, and faith in the theological, supernatural sense. Although both forms ultimately rely on God, they do so in different ways.

Faith in the ordinary or natural sense can be understood as trust. More specifically, it is the trust we have in the regularities and intelligibility of reality. Human beings, regardless of whether they admit to it or not, operate under this sense of faith by their very nature. We have faith that the reality in which we live is intelligible; that is, it can be comprehended. We have faith that our senses can acquire knowledge of this intelligible reality. We have faith that this intelligible reality operates under fixed laws and patterns that are ordered rather than being purely random or arbitrary. 

Every day, we expect the sun to rise, the air to be breathable, our phones and internet to work, and everything around us to continue existing. All of our daily activities rest on this kind of faith, yet we rarely give it a second thought because our faith in these things is ingrained in our very being. Without this faith, we would not be able to engage with the reality we live in nor function practically on a day-to-day basis. 

Those who object by claiming science tells us all we need to know miss the point entirely. Science simply tells us how the laws or patterns we observe operate, not why they specifically operate as they do or whether they ought to continue operating as such, or even why they exist in the first place. The scientific method and the entire field of science rest on the faith that the world itself is intelligible and that there is an order to it all; otherwise, all scientific inquiry is essentially rendered mute. 

For example, take a biologist who would like to study plants and the process of photosynthesis. For the biologist to even inquire about this plant, it rests on the faith that the plant will continue to exist, that the plant is itself knowable via our human senses and reasoning, and that the conditions and laws governing the process of photosynthesis remain constant. If any of these things mentioned above were to be false, scientific inquiry would be impossible. Who is to say that the plant will not cease to exist tomorrow or that the process of photosynthesis remains the same the day after analysis? Who is to even say that the plant is intelligible or that we have the capabilities to make observations? It all rests on this faith. 

In turn, what does this faith rest on? It rests on God. The natural order to the reality we live in, the persistence of things in existence, and the life-permitting conditions of our reality all point necessarily to the existence of God. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does life occur when it could so easily have not? Why is there an order to all that exists rather than an incoherent mess? All of these questions receive their answer in God, Who out of love, purposefully created, designed, and sustains all of reality.

As we have just discussed above, we are called to faith by our very nature, but God desires for us all to embrace the things which are higher. This is where faith in the theological and supernatural sense comes in. Faith in this sense is perfectly encapsulated in Hebrews (11:1): Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not. This is a poetic way of saying that faith is the assent of the mind to the divine or that which has been divinely revealed. It is to hold as true not what falls within human nature but that which transcends it. The theological virtue of faith does not come from ourselves but is solely a gift bestowed upon us by God. 

The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, the things of faith, the divine and supernatural, surpass human reason and are beyond what mere human minds can comprehend. This knowledge cannot come to man naturally but only by the revelation of God. The truths of faith to which the mind is called to believe are divine and must, therefore, come from the source of all that is divine: God.

Secondly, because the things we assent to are divine, thus transcending human nature, our faith in what has been revealed to us cannot simply be an inward act of our own accord. Instead, it is by the grace of God that we are able to have the theological sense of faith. The will of the person is required to have faith, but the Lord prepares the will of man by grace so that it may be in the right disposition to assent to the things of faith. 

Faith is not subrational. It is not some childish credulity to be mocked or scorned. It is not some ridiculous superstition. It is the very foundation of reasoning itself. Without the many faith-based beliefs we hold, we would not be able to reason anything. Faith, by virtue of preceding reason, is superior to it.

What’s more, not only does faith precede reason but it is also beyond reason. It is suprarational not subrational. It is the darkness beyond reason, where one leaps with hope and charity into the Lord’s loving, warm embrace. Faith surpasses what is merely the human ability to reason and enters into the realm of relation with God. This relation with God is a gift we do not deserve but receive nonetheless. We receive this gift not on any merits of our own but solely out of the perfect and infinite abundance of God’s love and mercy. Praise be to God.