Philip Harvey
Words written in response to the invitation “What you
value about your faith.”
Well, first I grew up in a world where faith was shown to
me, given to me. So it’s not as though faith is just some kind of thing, a
skill or talent, like musical ability or a flair for languages, that you either
have or you don’t. Faith has been lived out around me my whole life in other
people’s lives. So it is observable, as well as experienced personally.
One has to be careful in making easy claims for faith: often
faith happens when all grounds for faith have been removed. Like hope and love,
faith is still there when all reason for it may have been negated.
For me, faith is the constant proof that there is something
more than current explanations for living. I find the creed, for example, and
when of this mind, not a set of final absolute statements but a whole series of
ways into new meaning. The statements are less doctrines than clues as to how
faith can make meaning.
To say I have faith in these words of the creed is not the
same as saying I believe in them. We can and do believe “ten thousand things”
(as the Chinese say), but that doesn’t mean we have faith in them. I may
believe in most of the discoveries of science, that doesn’t mean I have faith
in science. The faith we put in the realities enunciated in the creed goes
beyond explanations.
Faith is turning me again away from distraction and noise.
Not only is it easy to go after the everyday sensations of life, the drive is
there to pursue them to the exclusion of all else, including faith, hope, and
love. This pursuit fills my days with temporary gratifications, with all the
little things I shore up to distract me from truth. It is a short-lived belief
in Me and the passing show, whereas faith is about the truth that is more than
Me, more than throwaway explanations and hasty cures.
There is no doubt that faith remains even when reasons for
faith have been attacked and even seemingly demolished. Nowadays some would
call this adaptation to changed circumstances. Maybe it is. Certainly the
ability to find new ways of dealing with life after catastrophe or loss or just
plain indifference is a remarkable human ability. Not everyone seems to have
this ability, others have it in abundance throughout their lives. Is it
something we learn? Where does it come from? Simple faith in possibility is
itself a gift. The faith though that (to get poetic) “moves mountains” and is
(to use Christian language) the resurrection, this kind of faith might start
with nothing. It is being declared as a way forward, against all the odds. Even
just to have such a faith as a possibility is an extraordinarily valuable
invitation, and its comes from outside ourselves, there for us to try and
understand, there to take up.
At other times I ask, What is faith? In arid times, or times
of stress or conflict or turmoil, I
will be left with only questions. Like, What is faith? Times of doubt, times
when the only certainty is uncertainty, can cause one to question everything
altogether. One can understand why others give it away, or simply see no point,
or seek permanently after distraction and impermanence, materiality and power,
as replacements for faith. But at such times there is only one thing really
that can be done, other than seeking help where it may be found, and that is to
ask after that which is unknown, which is beyond all these states of turmoil
and emptiness.
It is in this state that Christ’s promises, and Christ
himself, become the great value. We would give up everything for the pearl of
great price. We would follow him to Jerusalem, unready for the consequences,
although we think ourselves ready.
Then there is the second sense of the word ‘faith’, as
religion or religions, in the way we talk about great faiths of the world.
These are all to be valued. Christianity, for example, is a faith of outward
show as well as inward life, a faith of history, a faith across cities and
continents where its manifestations are culturally complex and ancient. As a
reminder and a means to personal faith, it is of inexpressible value. As simple
spectacle with a price tag, it is of no more value than the ten thousand other
distractions of this world.
In his own retreat summary, Bishop Graeme Rutherford used
words that helped further with my understanding of the value I put on faith.
Christianity keeps on working as a whole worldview that can be put to the test,
he said. This is certainly the case. By keeping to faith we see existence
clearly, new ways of seeing the world are explained. Faith keeps on giving, it
renews and is renewed. I was saying similar things when I wrote that faith is
the constant proof that there is something more than current explanations for
living. I am sometimes amazed at how that testing happens, and how faith is not
wanting.
He placed emphasis on how faith teaches us to see the wonder
of the world. It gives us a new way of seeing the world. This, I have to say,
is something I take so much as a given about faith that I did not think to
include it in my evolving page of values, when in fact it is at the core of the
creative act and the motive and object of so much creative work.
But faith, he said, is a way of living involving decisions
and actions. We can think about all sorts of things, can view the whole of
existence from a vantage point, but life itself and faith is out there “on the
road”, being and doing. Certainly this is a central truth of my life of faith.
It is one I value, simply for a start, because it is give freely and is a freedom to use wisely.
Words written in response to the invitation from
Bishop Graeme Rutherford, “What you value about your faith.” This invitation
came as part of a St Peter’s Eastern Hill parish retreat held this weekend at
Pallotti College near Millgrove in Victoria.
