Faith

[Gauracandra]

In another posting I listed 10 Virtues that William Bennet listed in his "Book of Virtues". Here is his introduction to stories based on "Faith".

 

Faith, Hope, and Love are formally regarded as “theological” virtues in traditional Christian doctrines. They mark dispositions of persons who are flourishing in life from that religious perspective. There is nothing distinctively Christian, however, in recognizing that religious faith adds a significant dimension to the moral life of humanity worldwide. Faith is a source of discipline and power and meaning in the lives of the faithful of any major religious creed. It is a potent force in human experience. A shared faith binds people together in ways that cannot be duplicated by other means.

 

Clashing faiths, on the other hand, divide people in sometimes the most violent ways. The history of the world’s religions unfortunately gives ringing confirmation to what James Madison so brilliantly analyzed in Federalist 10 as the natural human tendency toward faction. “So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities that where no substantial occasion presents itself the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.” A secular world stripped of all vestige of religion would assuredly have no “religious wars”, but it by no means follows that it would be a world at peace. We do faith a disservice in laying at its doorstep the fundamental causes of faction.

 

Faith contributes to the form and the content of the ideals that guide the aspirations we harbor for our own lives, and it affects the way we regard and behave with respect to others. What Paul cites as “the fruit of the Spirit” – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23) – has its parallels in all the major faiths; and the Golden Rule, expressed in one form or another, is recognized almost universally. The “Illustrations of the Tao”, assembled by C.S. Lewis as an appendix to The Abolition of Man, represents a more extensive collection of such widely recognized “Natural Law”.

 

A human being without faith, without reverence for anything, is a human being morally adrift. The world’s major religions provide time-tested anchors for drifters; they furnish ties to a larger reality for people on the loose. Faith can contribute important elements to the social stability and moral development of individuals and groups.

 

Early in this century the American psychologist and philosopher William James conducted a pioneering study of the faith experience of religious persons historically and throughout the world. It was published under the title The Varieties of Religious Experience. He discovered among those who had experienced the most profound religious states a virtually universal tendency toward what he called “monism” and “optimism”. Fundamental bedrock reality is both unified and good. If there are any universal articles of faith, these are prime candidates. In a world so fragmented and full of woe, faith in its underlying unity and goodness is a sustaining encouragement to those who are working on reality’s “surface” – within any of the major religious traditions – for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

 

To parents who are themselves insecure in their faith and, like the nineteenth-century English radical John Thelwall, think it “unfair to influence a child’s mind by inculcating any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion, and be able to choose for itself”, there is the enlightening anecdote in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table Talk for July 27, 1830. “I showed [John Thelwall] my garden, and told him it was my botanical garden. ‘How so?’ said h, ‘it is covered with weeds.’ – ‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘that is only because it has not yet come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries.’”