Faith and Belief
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
March 11, 2018
By Jared Adams
Good morning.
This year, each month has been assigned a theme to help direct our sermon topics. This month, the theme is faith.
When I heard what the theme was for my month, I started thinking about the word “faith” and what I might want to say about it, what it means to me, but before I got too far with that, my thoughts turned to a scene from the movie Star Trek VI. As a kid I pretty much memorized all of those movies, so I guess it’s not surprising that thinking about the word faith brought one of them to mind. In this scene, Spock, that most well known of Vulcans, is trying to impart the value of faith to a young Vulcan woman named Valeris, played by Kim Catrall. If you want to see some impressive range in an actress, watch Star Trek VI and follow it up with any episode of Sex and the City. Now, Vulcans, for those who don’t know are a species who have embraced a strict philosophy of logic and reason. They try to live their lives with as little emotional interference as possible.
Valeris, the younger Vulcan, is in deep conflict. The Klingon empire, an alien race they’ve been warring with for decades, is collapsing due to an environmental catastrophe. In their desperation, they have asked for assistance in evacuating their home planet. Valeris believes that the Klingons cannot be trusted. She believes that the opportunity must be seized to conquer the Klingons while they’re weak.
She says to Spock:
Do you not recognize that a turning point has been reached.
Spock replies:
History is replete with turning points. You must have faith.
V: Faith?
S: That the universe will unfold, as it should.
V: But is that logical? Surely, we must-
Spock shakes his head
S: Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the BEGINNING of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.
I remember being blown away by this scene when I saw it in the theater at the tender age of 12. Spock, the ultimate advocate for logic over emotion, telling a young Vulcan to have, of all things, faith? Even when one could argue that the logical course of action would be to conquer the violent Klingons?
It got me wondering, even then, what does it mean to have faith? Does it mean we think that things will probably turn out alright? As in, having faith in an outcome? Does having faith in an outcome mean we believe that outcome will come to pass? What exactly is the difference between faith and belief?
My gut feeling was that faith is kind of “belief lite” or “diet belief”. Faith is on its way to belief. I figured, faith means we choose to act as if things are going to turn out for the best.
The words carried different emotional weight for me as well. The word faith gives me sort of a warm, fuzzy feeling. Perhaps with a little warning around the edges, but mostly positive associations. The word belief, on the other hand, gives me sort of a prickly, boxed in feeling. I can’t hear the word without remembering a thousand cautionary tales about the dangers of unquestioning belief. I’ve found that the older I get, the fewer things I truly believe, but those things that I do believe I believe fervently.
An image came to mind as I was comparing the two - “belief” and “faith”. The image was of a bridge. Perhaps faith is like walking over a bridge and trusting that it will not break. And perhaps different kinds of bridges require different levels of faith.
A long foot bridge stretching out over a deep canyon? Crossing that will likely require a great deal of faith. Before ventured out onto it, we would probably want to be reassured that this bridge was designed by engineers. maybe with degrees from MIT. We would want to know that many others have successfully crossed this bridge before us.
We can imagine an identical bridge crossing over a babbling brook, but this time just a few feet below. This bridge may require less faith. By the time the bridge is only a few inches from the ground, we may not even bother with faith. As the task become less perilous, the need for faith diminishes. I would say it also is likely to transform, into belief. When we believe in a thing, we often give ourselves permission to take it for granted. We might even challenge the bridge by skipping along it or jumping up and down.
I suppose this demonstrates that we can believe things pretty casually, if they don’t pose an imminent threat. IF they don’t frighten us.
So at this point I wanted to check myself, and weigh in with some friends to see if my ideas were in the ballpark of what was commonly believed. I decided to put the question out into the world in the form of a Facebook post. I’m happy to say a few members of this congregation weighed in on this, but since I didn’t ask for permission to use their responses, I won’t mention anyone by name. The question I asked was “In your personal opinion and understanding, what is the difference between faith and belief?”
The answers started coming in right away. Now, I knew that the words “faith and belief” were loaded, but even so, I admit I was surprised at people’s responses. A few of the answers were so charged, they brought to my mind the image of a person coming up to me, a bulging bag slung over their shoulder.“What do I think about faith and belief?” They would ask. At this point, the person would dump out the contents of their bag in front of me. “That’s what.”
Some went as far as to say that they believed faith meant willfully ignoring evidence to support a false belief. From this perspective, faith is by definition at odds with empirical evidence.
Some people talked about faith as a sort of internal probability program that’s always running. As in, I have faith that the light will go on when I flip the light switch because it has done so almost without fail. Another person used the example of trusting a husband to pick up the dry cleaning because in the past he has been consistently reliable.
Still others describes faith as a device that allows us to trust in a positive outcome when the alternative is too upsetting to consider. Believing in the positive outcome of a dangerous surgery or believing that our children will return home safe from school every day. This is the kind of necessary faith without which just getting out of bed each morning would be challenging.
Others talked about faith in their fellow man to be righteous and honest, and how they tried to carry that faith with them in their interactions as a starting point for all their daily interactions and relationships.
Finally, there were those who described their faith in God. A faith perhaps unprovable but deeply felt, one that rooted them in themselves.
With all of the discrepancy around the definition of the word “faith”, I seriously considered changing my sermon topic completely and calling it something like “the trouble with language”. It would seem that the definition of faith is a deeply personal thing, and we view the concept through the lens of our own beliefs and histories.
However, this discrepancy comes at a cost. I could see how two people could enter a conversation, and if both of those people held prior convictions (conflicting prior convictions) about the definition of a word central to the discussion, a meaningful conversation becomes impossible.
To put it another way, if one person thinks you’re talking about a car and the other person thinks you’re talking about a sail boat, it’s going to lead to some confusion. One could be left wondering “Wait, why are we even talking about whether it can float or not?” or “What does tire pressure have to do with this?”
Perhaps the worst part of this kind of confusion is that people in this situation may never discover that they share more common ground than they realize. They simply lack a common vocabulary. In a very real way, they aren’t even speaking the same language.
So, in the end I decided the “trouble with language” would do as a tangent and didn’t require a full sermon. At least not this time. Besides, even with the discrepancies, I thought I was beginning to spy a unifying thread. And that unifying thread was…fear. The need for faith arrives when we are faced with the possibility of a fearful outcome. We have faith that the light will come on because it is frightening to be in the dark. Many of us have faith in a life after this one. It is frightening to consider the alternative. We have faith in our fellow man because if we did not, we might despair and lose our ability to trust. We have faith that our children will come home safe to us each day because if we didn’t find a way to trust in that, we would lock them away in their rooms, feeding them through a slot in the door, just to keep them out of harm’s way.
This isn’t to say that faith is some kind of willful blindness to the dangers of the world. Instead, each cross roads is an opportunity to choose where to place our faith. Faith doesn’t do the work of discriminating between things we should or shouldn’t have faith in. It would seem that part is up to us.
As UUs, we choose to have faith in the seven principles and we strive to make real those principles, as much as we can, because we believe that they have the potential to create a better, kinder world.
To some degree, we are all able to choose the things that we put faith in. The temptation will always be there when we are afraid to put faith in the wrong things.
We have seen throughout history what happens when people put their faith in anger. Nationalism. Vengeance. Hatred of the other. And we have seen what happens when people put their faith in love and acceptance. In equality and tolerance. Whether we are guided by the facts of history or the equally compelling call of our hearts, we come together on Sundays largely to remind one another of the things we believe to be true, and the faith required to live that truth.
Even Spock, speaking to Valeris, is cautioning her not give into fear. He is saying to her, “We must not crush our enemy simply because we can, and because we are afraid of what may happen if we do not. Instead, when their need is dire, we must extend a hand to help them.”
So may it be.
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
March 11, 2018
By Jared Adams
Good morning.
This year, each month has been assigned a theme to help direct our sermon topics. This month, the theme is faith.
When I heard what the theme was for my month, I started thinking about the word “faith” and what I might want to say about it, what it means to me, but before I got too far with that, my thoughts turned to a scene from the movie Star Trek VI. As a kid I pretty much memorized all of those movies, so I guess it’s not surprising that thinking about the word faith brought one of them to mind. In this scene, Spock, that most well known of Vulcans, is trying to impart the value of faith to a young Vulcan woman named Valeris, played by Kim Catrall. If you want to see some impressive range in an actress, watch Star Trek VI and follow it up with any episode of Sex and the City. Now, Vulcans, for those who don’t know are a species who have embraced a strict philosophy of logic and reason. They try to live their lives with as little emotional interference as possible.
Valeris, the younger Vulcan, is in deep conflict. The Klingon empire, an alien race they’ve been warring with for decades, is collapsing due to an environmental catastrophe. In their desperation, they have asked for assistance in evacuating their home planet. Valeris believes that the Klingons cannot be trusted. She believes that the opportunity must be seized to conquer the Klingons while they’re weak.
She says to Spock:
Do you not recognize that a turning point has been reached.
Spock replies:
History is replete with turning points. You must have faith.
V: Faith?
S: That the universe will unfold, as it should.
V: But is that logical? Surely, we must-
Spock shakes his head
S: Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the BEGINNING of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.
I remember being blown away by this scene when I saw it in the theater at the tender age of 12. Spock, the ultimate advocate for logic over emotion, telling a young Vulcan to have, of all things, faith? Even when one could argue that the logical course of action would be to conquer the violent Klingons?
It got me wondering, even then, what does it mean to have faith? Does it mean we think that things will probably turn out alright? As in, having faith in an outcome? Does having faith in an outcome mean we believe that outcome will come to pass? What exactly is the difference between faith and belief?
My gut feeling was that faith is kind of “belief lite” or “diet belief”. Faith is on its way to belief. I figured, faith means we choose to act as if things are going to turn out for the best.
The words carried different emotional weight for me as well. The word faith gives me sort of a warm, fuzzy feeling. Perhaps with a little warning around the edges, but mostly positive associations. The word belief, on the other hand, gives me sort of a prickly, boxed in feeling. I can’t hear the word without remembering a thousand cautionary tales about the dangers of unquestioning belief. I’ve found that the older I get, the fewer things I truly believe, but those things that I do believe I believe fervently.
An image came to mind as I was comparing the two - “belief” and “faith”. The image was of a bridge. Perhaps faith is like walking over a bridge and trusting that it will not break. And perhaps different kinds of bridges require different levels of faith.
A long foot bridge stretching out over a deep canyon? Crossing that will likely require a great deal of faith. Before ventured out onto it, we would probably want to be reassured that this bridge was designed by engineers. maybe with degrees from MIT. We would want to know that many others have successfully crossed this bridge before us.
We can imagine an identical bridge crossing over a babbling brook, but this time just a few feet below. This bridge may require less faith. By the time the bridge is only a few inches from the ground, we may not even bother with faith. As the task become less perilous, the need for faith diminishes. I would say it also is likely to transform, into belief. When we believe in a thing, we often give ourselves permission to take it for granted. We might even challenge the bridge by skipping along it or jumping up and down.
I suppose this demonstrates that we can believe things pretty casually, if they don’t pose an imminent threat. IF they don’t frighten us.
So at this point I wanted to check myself, and weigh in with some friends to see if my ideas were in the ballpark of what was commonly believed. I decided to put the question out into the world in the form of a Facebook post. I’m happy to say a few members of this congregation weighed in on this, but since I didn’t ask for permission to use their responses, I won’t mention anyone by name. The question I asked was “In your personal opinion and understanding, what is the difference between faith and belief?”
The answers started coming in right away. Now, I knew that the words “faith and belief” were loaded, but even so, I admit I was surprised at people’s responses. A few of the answers were so charged, they brought to my mind the image of a person coming up to me, a bulging bag slung over their shoulder.“What do I think about faith and belief?” They would ask. At this point, the person would dump out the contents of their bag in front of me. “That’s what.”
Some went as far as to say that they believed faith meant willfully ignoring evidence to support a false belief. From this perspective, faith is by definition at odds with empirical evidence.
Some people talked about faith as a sort of internal probability program that’s always running. As in, I have faith that the light will go on when I flip the light switch because it has done so almost without fail. Another person used the example of trusting a husband to pick up the dry cleaning because in the past he has been consistently reliable.
Still others describes faith as a device that allows us to trust in a positive outcome when the alternative is too upsetting to consider. Believing in the positive outcome of a dangerous surgery or believing that our children will return home safe from school every day. This is the kind of necessary faith without which just getting out of bed each morning would be challenging.
Others talked about faith in their fellow man to be righteous and honest, and how they tried to carry that faith with them in their interactions as a starting point for all their daily interactions and relationships.
Finally, there were those who described their faith in God. A faith perhaps unprovable but deeply felt, one that rooted them in themselves.
With all of the discrepancy around the definition of the word “faith”, I seriously considered changing my sermon topic completely and calling it something like “the trouble with language”. It would seem that the definition of faith is a deeply personal thing, and we view the concept through the lens of our own beliefs and histories.
However, this discrepancy comes at a cost. I could see how two people could enter a conversation, and if both of those people held prior convictions (conflicting prior convictions) about the definition of a word central to the discussion, a meaningful conversation becomes impossible.
To put it another way, if one person thinks you’re talking about a car and the other person thinks you’re talking about a sail boat, it’s going to lead to some confusion. One could be left wondering “Wait, why are we even talking about whether it can float or not?” or “What does tire pressure have to do with this?”
Perhaps the worst part of this kind of confusion is that people in this situation may never discover that they share more common ground than they realize. They simply lack a common vocabulary. In a very real way, they aren’t even speaking the same language.
So, in the end I decided the “trouble with language” would do as a tangent and didn’t require a full sermon. At least not this time. Besides, even with the discrepancies, I thought I was beginning to spy a unifying thread. And that unifying thread was…fear. The need for faith arrives when we are faced with the possibility of a fearful outcome. We have faith that the light will come on because it is frightening to be in the dark. Many of us have faith in a life after this one. It is frightening to consider the alternative. We have faith in our fellow man because if we did not, we might despair and lose our ability to trust. We have faith that our children will come home safe to us each day because if we didn’t find a way to trust in that, we would lock them away in their rooms, feeding them through a slot in the door, just to keep them out of harm’s way.
This isn’t to say that faith is some kind of willful blindness to the dangers of the world. Instead, each cross roads is an opportunity to choose where to place our faith. Faith doesn’t do the work of discriminating between things we should or shouldn’t have faith in. It would seem that part is up to us.
As UUs, we choose to have faith in the seven principles and we strive to make real those principles, as much as we can, because we believe that they have the potential to create a better, kinder world.
To some degree, we are all able to choose the things that we put faith in. The temptation will always be there when we are afraid to put faith in the wrong things.
We have seen throughout history what happens when people put their faith in anger. Nationalism. Vengeance. Hatred of the other. And we have seen what happens when people put their faith in love and acceptance. In equality and tolerance. Whether we are guided by the facts of history or the equally compelling call of our hearts, we come together on Sundays largely to remind one another of the things we believe to be true, and the faith required to live that truth.
Even Spock, speaking to Valeris, is cautioning her not give into fear. He is saying to her, “We must not crush our enemy simply because we can, and because we are afraid of what may happen if we do not. Instead, when their need is dire, we must extend a hand to help them.”
So may it be.
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