‘I Want to Believe’ – The Catholic Thing

I sometimes hear people say something like this: “I want to believe, but I just can’t,” or “I would like to believe, but I just don’t.”  I don’t wish to be critical of such people. I assume their reserve about “faith” comes out of a good-willed desire to be honest about themselves – like someone admitting, “I wish I were a calm, temperate person, but I’m just not.”

So, although I respect the goodwill, I still would wish to ask this person: “What do you think faith is?”  “What do you think having faith is like?”  I fear sometimes that people think “having faith” is the same as “being certain,” or that “having faith” is a feeling you get when you’re sure of something. What if it’s not?  What if it’s something else?  What if it’s like love – not quite a feeling as much as a way of living?

Before we could explore the question of faith, we would need to get clear on something else.  People don’t just “have faith”; they have faith in something.  In God. In God’s love for us. That God’s love for us is expressed and embodied in Christ.  So, we wouldn’t just ask about faith – that’s much too vague.  We would start by asking what this person believes or doesn’t believe in.

So, for example, we might ask: Does it seem reasonable to you that the entire universe, with all its beauty and order, and especially with human beings capable of knowing, loving, and sacrificing for each other, came from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing? It is hypothetically possible, but is that what you believe?  Some people do.  Do you?

Are you convinced that life – all life – and all existence is essentially meaningless? Because if you’re not convinced of that, then it is possible that life is meaningful.  And in fact, don’t you live your life that way? Haven’t you shown by the way you live your life – caring for people, trying to do good things rather than selfish things, appreciating beauty, and trying to understand the things around you more profoundly – that you do believe in something?

If we look at the way you actually live, wouldn’t we have to conclude that you actually believe that living this way is meaningful, not meaningless?  You act as though selfless care for others is meaningful, as though acting with love and care for others is good.  You don’t have any scientific proof that this sort of life is intrinsically meaningful and good.  But you live as though it were.  That’s a kind of faith.

So what if I said to the person who claims they wish they had faith but just can’t: “But wait, you actually do have faith; you just haven’t realized it or reflected on it.”  That presupposition you bring to the way you look at the world and the way you live your life when you assume that courage and kindness and generosity and care are better than cowardice and cruelty and arrogance and selfishness – that is part and parcel of what Christians call “faith.”

There’s no scientific proof that this life is better.  Indeed, there are plenty of reasons to suppose that being selfish makes more sense than being selfless.  Do you sometimes say to yourself: “I must be crazy to live this way, giving myself selflessly to others rather than just getting everything I can for myself?”

So, what keeps you coming back to selflessness and care and generosity?  Is it something you’ve noticed in your experience?  Is it something you just sense is true?  That sense you have that something you can’t touch or measure or prove scientifically is in fact true – true with the kind of truth you would be willing to bet your whole life on, even though sometimes you’re not entirely certain about it – this is what Christians call “faith.”

There’s no need to get caught up in the word.  Call it what you like. But just so you know: you have faith.  You just haven’t examined it.

So, for example, if you realized that you do believe that life is intrinsically meaningful – not only your life, but the life of all creatures – then you might start asking other questions, such as: How could that be?  How could a meaningless universe have love and meaning?  Was it perhaps the case that this meaningfulness that exists in all beings was a gift from a loving Creator?  Where else would we have gotten it?

People often imagine that a person first says: “God exists,” and then he says, “Oh, I guess I better be moral.”  But what if it’s the reverse?  What if people realize that the only meaningful life is a moral one of love and care and concern for others and then say to themselves: “I guess there must be a God who made all this possible”?

You want to live a life of selfless love?  Great.  Do it.  That sort of life requires a certain kind of faith.  If you live it, you have it.  Christians have an account of why that sort of life makes sense.  It involves a loving God who loves us so much He was willing to embrace our humanity and die for us.  In this, He revealed Himself as a selfless gift of love.

But don’t mistake the fact that you don’t quite “get” the account of why that life of love makes sense for a lack of faith.  When you despair of being the person you know you want to be, that is a lack of faith.  When you’re failing but still trying – when you still hold out for yourself the paradigm of goodness – then you’ve still got faith.  So stop worrying about whether you have it or not and just live it.