Faith

More from Uncommon Gratitude – on faith:

“The truth is that faith requires the awareness that God is and that God is holding all of us responsible for the other. Being a card-carrying member of a religious tradition does not give us the right to consume the world for our own ends and in the name of God. We do not have the right to loose havoc on the rest of the world in the name of the God we have made in our own image. It is not getting the rest of the world to think and worship as we do that qualifies as real religion. It is giving ourselves for the welfare of the rest of the world to which we are called….

Faith is belief that God is leading us to become in tune with the universe, however different we see ourselves to be.

Faith is trust in the unknown goodness of life without demand for certainty in the science of it.

Faith is belief that the God we call “our God” is either the God of all or cannot possibly be God at all.

Faith is confidence in darkness, for the willingness to trust in the deep-down humanity of others as well as in our own may be the deepest act of faith we can possibly devise.

Faith is the willingness to see God at work in others​—in their needs and ideas, their hopes and plans—as well as in ourselves.

Faith is the certainty that God is working through others just as certainly as God is working through us for the good of all humankind. For those things we sing alleluia. Those are surely the only things that can possibly save the globe from our own unmaking of it.

Faith, real faith, real willingness to forgo our own need to either understand God’s ways with humankind or control them ourselves, is real reason for alleluia.”

In this sense it occurs to me that faith holds both certainty and doubt, both knowing and not knowing.  Perhaps stated another way, faith is not the certainty that I am right, but the certainty that God is right.  Which makes me think of one of my favorite Anne Lamott quotes: “You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”