40%. Why 40% of the public have made a mistake. Part 3

40%. Why 40% of the public have made a mistake

Part 3: God is not a figure created by faith, but having faith is a vital ingredient of discovering God – it is the classic “chicken and egg” situation

I think the conclusion of this bit of intense reasoning is that when believers say that they encounter God as a real person, there are no grounds for dismissing this as not significant. Rather, for faithful people it is the key truth of their lives. And it really is not sufficient for people without faith to concede that, “That’s all very well for you; I’m very happy for you that you’ve had such an uplifting experience, but I haven’t, so I am free to ignore the significance of what you’re saying”. This way of thinking is still stuck in the mind frame of considering that faith in God is like trying to believe in someone you know is not there. Within the understanding of God that I am promoting, God is definitely there because God and faith are not separate things, and so God is available for everyone to experience. Traditionally, God is the personal agent and human beings put their faith in him. In this statement, both “God” and “faith” are nouns. However, I think that a better understanding is to understand “faith” as a verb. Faith is a way of looking, acting and being. God and faith are in a mutually reinforcing, reflecting back relationship. God is a person potentially existing for the person. The person then “puts their faith” in God (note the active verb at work here). So, the wonder of our understanding of the person of God (goodness, truth, love etc as considered earlier) prompts – or creates – a response of faith in the person of the believer. This faith then “brings alive” the person of God in a deepening relationship.

This process happens! It is not a hit and miss affair, a matter of luck, or personality; it is not the case that some people have the ability to experience God and some do not. The “God-faith” inter-relationship works. It cannot not work if the person is willing to believe. Notice that faith is now a matter of the will, not a mysterious knack that some have and some don’t. This is also a nice parallel with the Christian emphasis on agape, which is love given by the will, not according to some attraction or affection. Again, apologies to those who have genuinely tried for faith and it’s just not happened for them. My first bit of guidance would be to ask if you have failed to find faith in the “God as a thingy thing” that we mentioned at the start. I don’t think you will ever “force yourself” to find that sort of faith – no matter how much of your will you exert. It’s also the case that doubt is the great enemy of faith. If you find it difficult to let go of doubts, then faith will be extremely difficult. Some faithful people do not help by talking about the “certainty” of their faith and that they “know” that God exists. Strictly speaking, no-one knows that God exists, because knowledge of what exists in the world is only obtained through verification, so even the most devout believer only “believes” that God exists. So, if you have tried to believe, but only consider that you have faith if you can be certain that you have faith, then you are asking the impossible of yourself. Faith is always faith. This takes us back to our beginning and the difficulty that 40% of the population have in believing in God. They are sensible people and they understand that it is simply not possible to be certain that God exists. For them, this is a fatal stumbling block that entitles them to dismiss God and the life of faith, but they have simply misunderstood what a life of faith in God entails. The “secret” in terms of understanding what we are trying to do is not to try and have faith in God, but to have faith in having faith. As I asserted, rather boldly and aggravatingly above, having faith definitely works.