Question 1 – Martha’s Response

How do religion and faith each connect the individual to God?

I am a person of faith who is not religious. By this I mean that the meaningful aspects of my relationship with God are lived, and that I believe I limit God once I try to figure God out. For me, God is Mystery—not somewhat mysterious, but completely, wholly ineffable. When I am forced to think about the Almighty, I come up with this: God is whatever there is in you and me that has the guts and the desire to face the world with compassion as it actually is. Through experience, I’ve come to acknowledge that a partnership with this Something can lead me to live a more righteous life and connect me to other people in righteous ways that are impossible on my own.

I see religion and faith functioning as two different ways to acknowledge God’s presence. Religion (or religious practice, in the case of atheism and agnosticism) is whatever we do to worship, to deny, or to dither around about, the Almighty. It involves us humans subscribing to beliefs and explanations about the nature, existence (or inexistence), family, history etc, of the great Whatever—or however we wish to term the Mystery present in our world and in our lives. And, in the case of organized religion, it provides ritualized ways to approach that Mystery. And again, by Mystery, I’m not referring to the as yet unknown, but to the unknowable; whatever force there is beyond the reach of human intelligence and understanding, which is as close as I’m able to come to conceptualizing God.

Faith, on the other hand, assumes an acceptance of Mystery’s existence, an acceptance that God is. Faith is the direct, useful relationships a person develops with that Mystery. Its presence is demonstrated through actions and relationships. Faith is an energizer, a connection, a habit of being. It’s the philosophical and spiritual equivalent of a prime number; faith is only what it is.

Organized religions, built on a bedrock of stories and human conclusions drawn from those stories, invite debate. Certainly many persons of faith participate in organized religion, but faith, in itself, is not part of our religious argument. One either recognizes and relies upon God’s presence in self and in the world—has faith—or one doesn’t. It’s what we do as persons of faith that matters, not what we say or how we celebrate our beliefs.

The meaning of both terms dances around a person’s notion of God. Again, to me, as a person of faith who is not religious, all I’ve got to say about God is that God is. I accept that everything else about the great Whatever is unknown and unknowable. When I speak about God, I accept I’m only approaching the subject, I’m not encapsulating or defining  It. I also believe I diminish the potential reach and usefulness of my faith once I insist on defining or approaching God through specific language, ritual or beliefs. By doing this, I’m confusing the act of partnering with God (faith) with the act of practicing religion.

I do fully acknowledge the challenge of keeping one’s partnership with God (one’s faith) as simple as I believe it is. Whether we’re for, ag’in, or officially neutral about the Almighty, most of us simply demand more to chew on when dealing with God than simply acknowledging that God is. Even atheists don’t seem comfortable stopping with the simple statement “God isn’t.” It is so much easier to argue religion than it is to believe in God and get on with living as a person of faith. The challenge of faith is so disconcertingly relentless; as persons of faith we must accept that everything we do is done in God’s company.

In my experience, however, living as a person of faith brings great and quiet joy. A friend, a scientist, who’s Christian with doubts, once looked me right in the eye and asked, “Do you doubt God’s existence at all? To which I replied, cheerfully, “Nope!” Thinking about this afterwards, I concluded that I’m un-ambivalent about God’s existence because I’ve kept my relationship with the Almighty—my faith—bare bones simple. I haven’t loaded God down with any myth-based baggage (which appears to generate a great deal of both doubt and argument), and I’ve acknowledged the evidence in my own life that partnering with this Mystery—with whatever God is—has allowed me to change in good ways that I could not pull off on my own.