Developing A Faith That Works, 2: What Is Fidelity?

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] The word "faith," especially to Westernized Christians, has come to be seen as a primarily notional experience - having to do with what you think about God.  It tends to mean holding a certain set of "beliefs," believing a set of statements to be true, whether cast as biblical teachings or doctrines or dogma.  Your faith is judged by how much you believe and how accurate your beliefs are.  If you possess this "right" kind of faith, you're called a "believer."

As a result, this concept of faith as primarily an intellectual exercise has turned faith almost exclusively into a matter of the head, too often with disastrous results by heartless, nonloving "believers."

But significantly, that was not the central meaning and usage of the word "faith" in the history of human religion (including early Christianity).  As Karen Armstrong, in her powerful book The Case For God, states, "Religion was not primarily something that people thought but something they did ... Religion [from its very inception in human history] was always a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart."

It was a way of being and living, not simply a way of thinking.  The stories and sacred scriptures of every religion emphasized the journey of heart and spirit in learning the sacred art of self-forgetfulness and compassion.  As a result, religions developed powerful rituals and practices that, if followed and wholeheartedly engaged in, would enable adherents to step "outside" their egos and experience the Sacred and Divine, empowering them to live more compassionately and unselfishly toward others.

For example, as Armstrong points out, the early Chinese Daoists (over 300 years before Jesus and the early Christian followers) saw religion as a "knack" primarily acquired by constant practice.  They, like the earlier Buddha and even Confucius, refused to spend lots of time speculating about the many metaphysical conundrums concerning the divine (as Buddha once said to a follower who constantly pestered with those kind of questions:  "You are like a man who has been shot with a poisoned arrow and refuses medical treatment until you have discovered the name of your assailant and what village he came from.  You would die before you got this perfectly useless information!").

Zhuangzi (c. 370-311 BCE), one of the most important figures in the spiritual history of China, explained that it was no good trying to analyze religious teachings logically.  He then cited the carpenter Bian:  "When I work on a wheel, if I hit too softly, pleasant as this is, it doesn't make for a good wheel.  If I hit it furiously, I get tired and the thing doesn't work!  So not too soft, not too vigorous.  I grasp it in my hand and hold it in my heart.  I cannot express this by word of mouth, I just know it."

Like the Chinese hunchback who trapped cicadas in the forest with a sticky pole and never missed a single one.  He had so perfected his powers of concentration that he lost himself in the task, and his hands seemed to move by themselves.  He had no idea how he did it exactly, but he knew only that he had acquired the knack after months of practice.  This "self-forgetfulness," Zhuangzi explained, was a "stepping outside" the prism of ego and experience of the sacred.  (from Armstrong, The Case For God, pp. xii-xiii, 23.)

No wonder Jesus, centuries later, reiterated this paradigm of spirituality and religious experience when he called his followers to "take up your cross and follow me."  He's not simply talking about believing in your head the right doctrines and the core truths.  He's talking about a "way" of living.  Referring to his own experience as the example for his followers, he said, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who is willing to give up his life in this world will keep it forever." John 12:24-25

Genuine faith is not just about your head, it's about your heart, it's about your journey, it's about life transformation that comes from self-forgetfulness and an experience with God the Sacred and the Divine.

SO IN THIS SERIES, we're taking a look at the four words that are translated as "faith."  We're unpacking each word and exploring what it means and what the differing nuances suggest about developing a faith that works in real life, a faith that transforms life, a faith that defines ourselves and produces a rich and deeper experience of both God and Life.  It's a return to the core of what religion was always meant to facilitate but has too often lost along the way:  a transformation of the heart.  In my last blog, we explored the 1^st word for faith, “fiducia,” from which we get our English word "fiduciary" (a person in whom we place our trust to protect our finances and estate).  So “trust," is the central definition, which in the realm of faith then conveys a profound kind of relaxed, solid, worry-free confidence in God as a power that can be trusted and relied upon to have our best interests in mind.

Today's word for faith is "fidelitas," which is the Latin word for "fidelity."  It literally means loyalty, faithfulness – originally referring to a vassal's loyalty to his Lord; a steadfast and devoted attachment that is not easily turned aside; constancy, steadfastness.  Faith as fidelity means loyalty, allegiance, the commitment of the self at its deepest level, the commitment of the “heart” to the experience of God not simply to statements about God.  A radical centering in God from your heart and soul not just your mind.  So what does that look like in real life terms?

There are two metaphors that the sacred scriptures use in describing our faith relationship with God that I'll unpack in my next blog post.  These metaphors describe what "fidelity" is NOT and so help to increase our understanding of what genuine faith as fidelity and loyalty is.  Stay tuned!

Thin Love or Thick Love?

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] Toni Morrison, writer and winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote these words:  "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all."

"Thin" love.  Interesting choice of word.  What does the word "thin" imply about love?  A kind of superficiality, shallow, no real depth - which could refer to insincere or incongruous or even forced.

Consider some of the ways we might manifest a thin love:  saying we love but not really backing it up with appropriate action; giving conditionally (a quid pro quo approach - if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours); being manipulative rather than honest and straightforward (sort of a passive-aggressive strategy); refusing to ever take off the self-protective mask, to not risk being vulnerable and truly present; and the list goes on.  Thin love.

But the context of Morrison's quotation adds another powerful dimension to the meaning.  This statement comes from her tragic novel Beloved, the epic story of a fiercely defiant runaway slave woman named Sethe.  The story is based on the true case of Margaret Garner, a renegade slave who tried to kill her children with abortions rather than allow them to be born and returned to the plantation from which she had escaped.

One of the run-aways Sethe meets, Paul D, considers Sethe's unconditional love "risky": "For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love."  The far safer way was "to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one."

And it is this "weak love" that Paul D tells Sethe she must accept. When Paul D tells her love is "too thick," however, Sethe insists: "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't no love at all."

Thin love plays it safe.  Thick love takes a risk.  Thin love worries about and protects itself.  Thick love sacrifices everything for the other.  Thin love is conservative.  Thick love is freedom.  Thin love controls.  Thick love gives away.  Thin love is afraid.  Thick love is courageous.

I think of the phrase people often say, "Love is thicker than blood."  What does that mean?  It's often used in reference to being loved by someone who isn't necessarily your biological family but who loves with you a faithfulness and loyalty that you might not experience from blood family.  Thick love.  Someone who shows up for you no matter what, no strings attached.  Someone who stands beside you through thick and thin.  Someone who refuses to let you go, who has your back in every situation.  Thick love.  Feels good when you experience it, doesn't it?

This last weekend I had the privilege of flying to Portland and celebrating my prayer partner and best friend's 50th birthday.  He invited 7 of his guy friends to spend two days together, sharing stories of our journey with him, giving advice for his next 50 years, celebrating the milestone of his life and how we each have enjoyed friendship with him.  One of the things that struck me as I listened to all the guys share the meaningful parts of our experience with him and how his friendship had impacted each of us was the quality of "thick love" that manifested itself through the years.  He had chosen to stand by each of us in meaningful and supportive ways, especially during the difficult and ominous times we each had gone through.  Though others had forsaken us in our failures, he had stood by us and loved us and believed in us unconditionally.  That "thick love" was one of the huge gifts we ended up sharing and expressing our gratitude to him for.  I was reminded how important thick love is in building great friendships and relationships and how much we all hunger for this kind of love.  It's one of the greatest gifts we can give to others!

I love the way this proverb puts it:  "Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed.  If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.  Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone?  A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)  Now that's thick love - the transforming effects of great friendship and relationships.  You help the other when they fall (loving support), you keep the other "warm" (pay attention to physical and emotional needs in ways that mean something to that person), and you defend the other (have each other's backs in every way).  Thick love so thick (like a triple-braided rope) that it can't be broken (solid, long term, committed).

Love is or it ain't.  Being "thick" certainly isn't the easy way (you might get attacked in your personal support of the other, you might not get all your needs met, you put your own heart on the line at times, your caring might not always be appreciated or recognized, you risk loss, you make yourself vulnerable).  But in the end, maybe it's the most fulfilling because it's the most congruent with the very nature of love (which of course is at the core of spirituality).  The way we were meant to really love and be loved.  It's the heart of divine love that is given to us unconditionally and extravagantly.  Thick love.  Toni Morrison is right:  love is either thick or not love at all.  So I'm voting for thick love.  It's changed my life.  And I want the love I give to others to be thick, too.