Training the Habit of Faith

Faith (in its larger, generic sense) is in C. S. Lewis’ words, “the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.”  In order to have strong faith we must first acknowledge that our moods do change. 

 

Moods are affected by how we feel: rested, tired, sick, hungry, uncomfortable, threatened, stimulated, bored, confident in company of others, by the weather, etc. Some people are driven primarily by reason, others by emotion, others by sense of duty, others by their social environment.  Some people are driven by principles, or promises, or their sense of position or the expectation of others.  Nearly everybody is driven, sometimes, by their moods.

I am a Christian.  More than that, I am a disciple of Christ. We Christians train our life in Christ, our convictions as disciples of Christ, by deliberately holding in our mind and reviewing daily some of its main doctrines and our covenants pertaining to them.  That is why daily prayers, daily religious readings, weekly churchgoing, frequent acts of service, reviewing in our minds inspirational music, integrating our doctrines into our actions, and so on, are necessary to becoming ‘steadfast and immovable’ in our faith. These things are stronger and can displace negative moods if trained. 

We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.  Our beliefs, once activated at some point in time (e.g., our baptism, or mission, or marriage, or a sacred spiritual experience) will not stay bright in our memory unless continually reviewed.  Neither will our behavior reflect these things or our living Faith in Christ be automatically sustained.

We can be acted upon by our mood, or we can act in faith. 

 

Remembering great spiritual things that touched our lives will help us unstick ourselves from the quicksand of mood and move forward in faith.

Depth or Breadth?

I was recently disappointed (certainly not the first time) when I asked a young adult person I know what it was he liked to read.  He answered, “I don’t like to read.”  I asked him what he liked to do in his spare time.  He answered, “Play video games.” 

 

Since I am an educator I wondered who let this young man down?  Who didn’t teach him—his parents, his school teachers?  Who were his models or mentors? What distracted him away from an enriching education in his more formative years?  What’s keeping him from enriching himself now?

What a poverty it is to not have more than just a functional literacy when so much more is available.  In playing off my ‘Cultural Literacy’ posting of a few weeks ago—and not just for the purpose of making ourselves more interesting to others--  I make another pitch for greater breadth in our knowledge. Such a pursuit, I suggest, leads to a richer, fuller, more satisfying and useful life than just ‘having a job.’

My dad was somewhat like the young man I referred to in the first paragraph. Growing up as a farm boy in the Great Depression he did not have the advantages of a good education.  His elementary schooling was in a single-room, multi-grade school with a teacher(s) who didn’t inspire him.  But neither did he much take advantage of the library of his high school or the town library.  In consequence he developed a pragmatic, hands-on, somewhat in-depth education of farming and mechanics which provided materially for his small family, but gave them very little example or encouragement or influence to go beyond—to a ‘higher education.’ Dad always had a ‘job,’ and he did it well, but he was narrow in a way that I did not want to be. Moreover, since he didn’t have the vision of advanced education he was always suspicious of it.  Many were the times I heard him disparage lawyers and doctors and military officers and college professors and other professionals.  He never did much approve my becoming a teacher. He did encourage his boys to ‘learn a trade’ and learn it well—in depth. Only one son did.

Somehow, in the midst of this upbringing, I became interested in books and my world opened up.  To my knowledge I became the first young person in either my mother’s or my father’s family ever to go to college.  I went to community college and on to get my bachelor’s degree at a state university.  But even at these two institutions the pressure and focus—to my mind—were narrow; the college ‘majors’ focused on becoming well-trained for a practical vocation or profession. They did that, but did not inspire me the way my outside reading did—of history, geography, biography, philosophy, religion and thereby come closer to answering the ‘great questions’ of life. 

And then I investigated and joined a religion that went far-beyond in theology and doctrine the focus of the ‘feel-good’ churches I was familiar with.  This decision opened up my life to even greater possibilities .

 

I went on to get a ‘master’s degree,’ but that just helped make me more of a ‘master’ in what I taught in the public schools.  In the meantime I kept reading--both secular subjects and now in a vast theological and religious library. Not only did this world open up, but more illuminating was the hint of  worlds beyond this one: "And worlds without number have I created . . . but only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you . . . " (Moses 1: 33, 35).

Later, even my doctorate, had I kept strictly to subject matter requirements, was too narrow.  So I intentionally went beyond the requirements, when I had the time, and took advantage of the wonderful world of books and symposia and lectures and discussions with men and women of great minds that a great university provided.

 

Because I had to provide for my family professionally, I involved myself, of necessity, in what I viewed as ‘the thick of thin things,’ or with a depth of learning in a limited sphere with a modern advanced degree.  But my real education which I pursued on my own initiative was one of breadth—in the spirit of the pre-twentieth century doctor of philosophy.  (I heard it said that the modern Ph.D is someone ‘who knows more and more about less and less until he knows almost everything about almost nothing.’  I did not want that for myself; so I opted for the old-school variety.)

One may need a college degree to 'make a good living,' but one does not need it to make a rich life.  That is entirely up to our own initiative.

 

For me, obtaining ‘breadth’ is almost as important as obtaining ‘breath.’ Anything else will become obsolete.  Jesus said, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, [riches, degrees, celebrity, material possessions] and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

This is a good question for all of us to consider.