“Faith without works is dead”, so the bible very vividly proclaims. For many of us, the reverse is the case. I keep working, and I think I have no faith. But that is such a lie, because if I did not have a mustard seed of belief, I would not be doing my works without it. Maybe doing the works is in itself a manifestation of the faith, the kind that climbs the ladder before it feels sure. Maybe the feeling comes later, after the climbing.
So what is it I’m missing? I guess I’m just scared that my faith — the slim strand of evidence for the things I cannot see but my heart sorely wants — will be dashed again. I jumped once and hurt my foot when I landed badly, so of course I eye the board differently now. Perhaps that fear does not prove my faith is gone. Perhaps it is simply the price of faith after you’ve been hurt. Faith will inevitably leave scars.
I remember this from watching the Lantern series, where they ask a young boy with a gun pointed at an apple on his head again and again: “Are you afraid?” Because you cannot construct your will into life without faith, or rather, with fear. I think about the totality of the will, the solidity of your faith, and the absence of fear it must take to be a Lantern. Imagine ignoring everything you know to be true about the laws of physics, that the mere projection from a ring you’re wearing will protect you and others from bullets and harm, as long as you believe, and will it to be so.
Can will be separate from faith? I don’t think so. For your willpower, that force that drives your ambition, to be flawless, your faith must be unshakeable. No matter what is in front of you and threatening to harm you, everything that governs the physical world will stop because you have willed it.
Maybe that is why the hero is asked about fear again and again: courage only counts when fear is in the room. Kierkegaard said something like this about Abraham, the man of faith, who went up the mountain to see God, trembling. Tillich said doubt isn’t faith’s enemy but a part of it. If I were certain, perhaps I wouldn’t need faith at all.
So is faith the countenance of fear, or its counter-order? Does faith drive fear out, the way He says perfect love does? Or does faith mean walking forward with fear still walking beside me? I think I’m leaning toward the second. I have the works. I have the faith. And I’m afraid. Maybe all three can be true at once.
Originally published on Medium ↗