What is faith?

When I was a boy in the 1950s, I was not aware of the McCarthy hearings. Somehow it filtered down to me, though, that communism was a grave menace.

One of my childhood fears was that the Communists would come to our front door, come in with their guns and demand that everyone in the family deny God or die.

We were doomed, of course, because I just knew that they couldn’t torture us enough to make us deny God. I took solace about my slow, painful death knowing that I would quickly be given the inheritance of the saints.

Somewhere in that abstruse childhood vision was a germ of faith. Strip away all the fears and irrationality and conjecturing and you have a small boy with a simple statement upon his lips: I believe in God.

I laid turning in my bed the other night with this faith business. I say I believe, but what am I doing when I do that?

It occurred to me that I had said, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, an in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord…” so many times. Have I merely become conditioned by saying the words? Do I really believe what the words say, the reality that the words represent? What is faith, anyway?

St. Paul says in Hebrews: “Faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for, and conviction about things we do not see.”

Country and Western singer Tommy Hawk says everybody has a “knower” inside of them, and faith is knowing something in your knower.

I heard the story about a man who lost a child in a cruel accident. He became very bitter toward God and turned away from Him. Then the man lost another child in another cruel accident. The man then turned back to God and fell on his face in surrender to Him.

It seems to me that in both instances the man had faith. He believed in God. The only thing that changed was his relationship with Him.

I was always taught that faith is a gift. It therefore seems logical to me that it was conceivable that I didn’t get mine. Scripture says, however, that each person is given a measure of faith.

Father Joe Redinbo told the story in our church the other Sunday about a fellow listening to the Gospel about Jesus saying if a person had faith like a mustard seed, he could tell the mountain to hurl itself into the sea.

Father’s fellow thought he’d try that. Before he went to bed that night he told his wife that he was going to tell a tree in his garden to be gone. He got up the next morning and the tree hadn’t budged. He said to his wife, “I knew that tree would still be there.”

Of course, the man had no faith. Had he had faith, he would have been forced to conclude that what he saw in his garden was a very similar, different tree, come to take the other one’s place.

St. Paul goes on to say in Hebrews, “Anyone who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He rewards those who seek Him.”

I suppose if the Communists were to come to my house today and put a gun to my head, it’s altogether possible that I would tell them what they wanted to hear, I might scream a lot of things to save my hide.

I’d be ashamed not to have the courage to state openly my belief in God, even at the cost of my life. But whether I said it or not, I’d still believe it. It’s like it’s out of my hands.

Even if they put me feet first through a grinder, I don’t believe it’s possible to change the fact that I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord.

I guess that’s what faith is.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on August 31st, 1986