The History Of Belief
This video kind of blew me away. What if our understanding of belief has been reshaped and we didn’t even know it?
Karen Armstrong, author of The Case For God, shares her thoughts on belief at the TED conference. Her understanding of belief is important for framing our own understanding of how our present history shapes how we approach our own faith.
“I began to realize that belief, which we make such a fuss about today, is only a very recent religious enthusiasm. It surfaced only in the West in about the 17th century. The word belief itself originally meant, “to love, to prize, to hold dear.” In the 17th century it narrowed its focus…to include an intellectual ascent to a set of propositions.
Credo, I believe, it did not mean I accept certain credal articles of faith. It meant I commit myself. I engage myself.”
Armstrong shares that other traditions, such as the Quran call belief,
“self-indulgent guesswork about matters that nobody can be certain one way or the other but make people sectarian and quarrelsome.”
But what I really appreciated about Armstrong’s talk is her both/and approach. She doesn’t separate belief from action.
“What I found across the board is that religion is about behaving differently. Instead of deciding whether or not you belief in God, first you do something. You behave in a committed way and THEN you begin to understand the truths of religion. Religious doctrines meant to be summons to action. You only understand them when you put them into practice.”
“People seem to equate faith with believing things as though that were the main thing they do. Very often secondary goals get put into the first place.
I deeply appreciate this approach given the Way Jesus modeled following the Way of love. Love was the first order of things. In many ways that very notion speaks loudly to my own concern for the evangelical tradition, which places belief as the first order of things. Faith is something we engage to learn what we believe as opposed to something we say we believe and never really learn why. It really makes me wonder how the Reformation really changed the way we approach belief. What was it about the 17th century that shifted the focus from practice to an intellectual ascent?
But more importantly, I think Armstrong’s understanding of belief also suggests something important about the nature of belief. If my specific list of beliefs is a requirement, or if I have to believe a specific way, it places me back in the category of religion. I have returned to the transactional model of religious duty in order to receive salvation. I reject that notion. My faith is in the person of Jesus to be correct for me, not in my specific belief about him. I don’t have to figure out the specific linguistically correct credo. Jesus has already done everything for me.
This approach doesn’t release me from faith though. It releases me from having to figure it all out. It allows me to sit at the footsteps of Jesus and learn the Way. It releases me from having to worry about being correct, or right, or perfect. It releases me to peace about how God sees me. It releases me to love because I am first loved.
Armstrong shares a rather amusing and ironic thought about how we approach faith. She says, “A lot of religious people prefer to be right rather than compassionate.”
Dooooooh!
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