A Personal Examination and Expression of Faith

I drew many meaningful insights from a book recommended to me one of my closest friends many ago titled Why Religion? A Personal Story by Elaine Pagels. How to go on? Pagels writes after a searing personal tragedy. She recalls Viktor Frankl's writing that when our lives or the world in which we find ourselves living turn out different from what we expect or would ever want, we have to do “what life expects of us”; "We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by life—daily and hourly…Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems, and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” Pagels writes: "I was startled to realize that somehow I still wanted to believe that we live in a morally ordered universe, in which someone, or something—God or nature?—would keep track of what’s fair. Was this a relic of Western cultural tradition that moralizes history, like those old Bible stories I’d heard, that suggest that doing good ensures well-being and doing wrong brings disaster?" So, I ask myself, personally, do we live in a "morally ordered universe.” I believe the answer is "yes.” To be sure, I recognize that my response is an expression of faith. At almost the same time I was reading Why Religion? I came upon a compelling statement bearing on the role of belief and faith in William James' Essays in Pragmatism. James writes. "Belief, as measured by action, not only does but must outstrip scientific evidence. In such questions as God, immortality, absolute morality and free will, (one) can always doubt his creed but his intimate persuasion is that the odds in its favor are strong enough to warrant him acting all along on the assumption of its truth". We may in the end find we are wrong, I reflect, but I have found it better to act on the belief it is true than a belief it is not. This is how I have long felt about my faith in a Supreme Power, in there being an ultimate good.” William James uses a common sense example to illustrate his point. A rock climber finds himself in a life-threatening predicament: he has to make a leap to another distant ledge to have a chance of surviving. It is a longer leap than he has ever before attempted. He has no evidence he can do it. He is faced with a choice. On the one hand, he can be so consumed by doubt, debating and delaying his decision whether to jump, to the point he loses the strength to do it successfully when he does try. Alternatively, he can decide to act on the belief, with the "faith" that he can do it. Needless to say, he is far more likely to survive pursing the latter choice. Just so it was faith that led me to push to open up Eastern Europe aggressively with P&G in the early 1990s. So it was with faith that we set out raise 100+ million dollars to build the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. So it is with faith that I pray to God for the wisdom to know the right thing to do and the courage and determination to do it. I do so uncertain if God actually hears my prayer, but I know that reaching out to God helps me act in line with my best instincts. As James writes: "There are cases where faith creates its own verification.” I have discovered that again and again. Pagels goes on to shine a bright light on our commonality as people. She recognizes our common passage on the journey of life. Here is what she writes: In the Gospel of Thomas, the “good news” is not only about Jesus; it’s also about every one of us. For while we ordinarily identify ourselves by specifying how we differ, in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, background, family name, the call to recognize that we are “children of God” requires us to acknowledge how we are the same—members, so to speak, of the same family. These sayings suggest what later becomes a primary theme of Jewish mystical tradition: that the “image of God,” divine light given in creation, is hidden deep within each one of us, linking our fragile, limited selves to their divine source. Although we’re often unaware of that spiritual potential, the Thomas sayings urge us to keep on seeking until we find it: “Within a person of light, there is light. If illuminated, it lights up the whole world; if not, everything is dark.” Emerging from a time of unbearable grief, (Pagels had just lost her husband after earlier losing her son), "such sayings helped dispel isolation and turn me from despair, suggesting that every one of us is woven into the mysterious fabric of the universe, and into connection with each other, with all being, and with God." Believing this is a matter of faith. Many would argue we are all independent individuals with particular characteristics of race and ethnicity developed over a long period of evolution—and not interconnected as "children of God" nor members of the same family in a true familial sense. I, of course, cannot offer irrefutable evidence that we are all are indeed members of the same family. But I believe it. And I am sure that belief, or faith if you'd prefer it, has led me to act differently than I otherwise would. It leads me to try my best to put myself in the other person's shoes, to try to listen to others carefully, knowing I have a lot to learn and that it is the greatest demonstration of respect I can convey to another person. And it leads me to truly believe and act on the truth, "Everyone Counts.” Once again quoting William James: "There are cases where faith creates its own verification.” The Gospel of Thomas, then, is all about relationships—how, when we come to know ourselves, simultaneously we come to know God. Implicit in this relationship is the paradox of gnosis—not intellectual knowledge, but knowledge of the heart. What first we must come to know is that we cannot fully know God since that Source far transcends our understanding. But what we can know is that we’re intimately connected with that divine Source, since “in him we live and move and have our being.”