Expressions of Faith
Belief, faith not the same
By Alvin Nakamura
Special to The Advertiser
People use "belief" and "faith" interchangeably. However, I keep the two separate because each support me in different ways in my spiritual journey.
Belief has to do with the question: Does God exist? Atheists, agnostics and believers provide different responses to the same question.
Atheists believe there is no God, that God is a figment of the imagination.
Agnostics straddle the fence, acknowledging that the existence of God can be neither proved nor disproved. The prayer of the agnostic goes like this: "O God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul."
Believers believe God exists. For people not born and raised in a religious family, belief begins with a searching for God. And once that has begun, God has been found. This passage from the Bible summarizes belief: "Jesus said unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou has believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed" (Gospel of St. John, 20:29).
Does God care about his creation? This is the faith-in-God part.
Deists believe that God exists, but that, having created the universe, God has stepped back and does not intervene in his creation.
Deists believe God does not intervene in his creation because, were God to do so, we would not have free will. That would make us merely puppets doing the dance God has choreographed, from birth to death, and beyond.
The Calvinist idea of predestination takes this view to an extreme: When we are born, God knows whether we are "saved" or not. But the fact that God knows our future does not mean that God has predetermined that future. For he has given us the power to choose whether to believe or not. So he waits, with his infinite patience, for us to seek him. And as stated earlier, once we go looking for him, we have found him.
Theists, in contrast to deists, trust that God does care about his creation. Praying is done on the faith that God will respond. We pray to God to intercede for people in distress, or to help us with our own problems. We pray to give thanks, to repent or just to talk story. And through prayer, we hope that God will help us from making bad choices.
How do these ideas of belief and faith help me in my spiritual journey? Well, my unshakable belief in the existence of God, and my sometimes doubting faith in God, point me in one direction: discipleship. Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, summarizes discipleship this way: "God has given us a moment to be worthy of His love. That is what we must do, all our lives, in every way possible, until He calls us back."
Alvin Nakamura was a member of Central Union Church. He submitted this column shortly before he died on June 28, and his family has given permission to publish it.
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