Practicing Faith

Going to seminary was a real act of faith for me. I mean this in a literal, concrete way. Actually getting in the car about a week ago, kissing my wife and child goodbye (if only for a week), and pointing the car on the concrete and pointing it west into the vast Great Basin desert took an act of will and an act of faith. I’ll be absolutely honest, when I woke up that morning my main thought was “I don’t have to do this. I could just stay home.” As I passed each NV city along I-80 I thought “Here’s a place I could turn around.” Despite years of thinking, praying, reflecting, and planning, when it came time to actually do it, it was harder than I thought it would be.

There is an argument that faith is not as much a matter of consistent, wholehearted belief as it is a matter of practice; of acting as if God is good, just, loving, gracious and faithful regardless of what you believe. As an anthropologist, this concept resonated with me. I am an adherent of “practice theory;” the theory that our daily acts and practices from the mundane (getting dressed) to the complex (worshiping a deity) form our beliefs and culture as much as or more than our ideas, cosmologies, and ethics. So, the idea that faith itself may essentially be a practice holds a lot of appeal for me. My only quibble with this concept of faith is that I don’t think anyone simply acts; you only behave if, in fact, you believe.

My drive to seminary added a layer of complexity to this question. Certainly my beliefs felt very distant when I actually had to get in that car. My stomach was roiling and my head was full of that confused fog you have when you are filled with strong emotions. I more or less had to exercise discipline and just make myself do it. It was an ACT of faith in a moment of doubt. Perhaps a gift we all have is that our moments of strong belief, our times of deep, intellectual faith, do not actually have to align at every moment with our acts of faith.