WHAT IS FAITH

February 27, 2022

Some years ago, in Sunday School class the teacher looked at me and said, “Cornell, what is faith.” Seconds passed, meanwhile I pondered for some reflective answer, but Mr. Spence moved on. I knew, what I’d heard since my youth, a biblical answer could be Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.” But this answer seemed inadequate for explaining faith by my thoughts, considering other references in the bible, where ‘simple-faith’ alone doesn’t hold up to God’s expectations, such as in the book of James and many of the Red-Letter Words, Jesus’ commands.

 

We identify our church attendance with a ‘particular faith’ – by which we attend different traditions, such as Methodist, Presbyterian, Friends, or Catholic faith, etc. In this context the use of ‘faith’ may identify different theologies or orthodoxy, but orthodoxy is not faith. If you check dictionaries, you may find ten or more definitions for ‘faith’, one of them, as relates to theology, being “Christianity trust in God and his actions and promises.”

Faith in the context of our relationship to God – the requirement for a person of ‘faith in Christ’ to reap good for humanity and for us individually, including salvation – is the question we want to answer. However, Catholicism had already settled this question, essentially at the founding of Christianity, when Emperor Theodosius – circa 400 A.D. – made Christianity the official religion of Rome. For Catholics, faith, salvation, church decrees – the whole bailiwick – is baked in orthodoxy, their Catholic canon; further interpretation of the Bible is closed to an individual’s misinterpretation. 

Fast forward 1,100 years to Martin Luther’s nailing his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517 A.D. – Protestantism would spread its many variegated wings over the earth, opening the door to thousands of denominations, sects, free for different interpretations: indeed, different people of the same denomination persist searching for the meaning of certain words and scriptures. 

So “What is faith?” in the perspective set forth above: the requirement for a person of ‘faith in Christ’ to reap good for humanity and for us individually, including personal salvation? 

 

As I began writing this short abstract, I read a faith-parallel-opinion written by Pastor Kate Murphy: Remembering the doctor who changed the way I think about Jesus: “It’s interesting to me how many Christians believe that following Jesus has nothing to do with our actions, only our words. So many of us believe that grace means what we do is of no interest to God, only what we believe in our hearts and say with our lips.” For this pastor, the doctor’s witness challenged her to follow Jesus ‘more faithfully.’ (Could all of us be more faithful Christians?)

 

Perhaps, to define ‘faith’ – in the context of ‘following Jesus’ – we go to the book of James and some of the Red-Letter Words of Jesus found in the Gospels. 

 

James, whether the brother of Jesus or not, clearly, without equivocation, makes clear ‘Faith without works is dead.’ James (asv) 2: 17 “… faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself.” James’ writing extensively speaks to ‘one without action and work ­– to back up the word – faith fails.’  

 

In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives the ultimate appeal to be a ‘faithful Christian’: Mat 5: 14-16 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works [emphasis added] and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” 

 

In the Jesus’ parable teaching, separating the goats (on left hand) from the sheep (on right hand): ‘goats’ that did not feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, take in the stranger, cloth the naked, visit the sick, and did not visit the prisoned, were domed to eternal punishment; the ‘sheep’ – those who fulfilled all these things – the righteous, into eternal life. Summarily, Jesus was saying, ‘If you do not do these things, you do not have ‘faith’; ‘you have no faith in Me, Jesus Christ.’ If you do these things, you have a deep faith; your faith is reinforced by your action.

 

Tony Campolo, in his book Red Letter Christians, said “Mahatma Gandhi’s claim that everybody in the world knows what Jesus taught – except for Christians!” Gandhi was expressing what so many Christians really already know, but, perhap conveniently prefer to overlook, putting emphasis on scriptures that may seem least burdensome. 

 

I believe to have faith, the faith of James, faith of Jesus, faith in Christ, based on scripture, requires action and work: It is for a person’s ‘faith in Christ’, to work the best we can, for the good of humanity and for our own good, including personal salvation. That’s faith, the faith that Jesus would have us pursue; the faith that we must strive for if we want to be a ‘genuine Christian.’ I know this faith is not always easy – but it is simple. I will be the first one to say, “in major part I have failed.” But our growth in faithfulness has unlimited opportunity for all who seek to be diligent in work for humanity. 

 

Albert Nolan, in his book, Jesus before Christianity, in reference to Jesus wrote: “He himself did not regard the truth as something we simply ‘uphold’ and ‘maintain’, but something we choose to live and experience. So that our search, like his search, is primarily a search for orthopraxis (true practice) rather than orthodoxy (true doctrine). Only a true practice can verify what we believe.” Orthopraxis will lead us to the true essence of Jesus. Only by orthopraxis – that is ‘we doing the work for Jesus’ – can Jesus’s ‘grace’ and ‘justice’ permeate God’s infinite love, mercy, and goodwill to humankind – to become ‘the salvation for this world.’ This is the noblest cause for loving God, loving our neighbor, and for our ‘eternal life’, irrespective of what one believes about personal salvation. “What we believe in our hearts and say with our lips” is not faith, until action brings it to fruition. So let us begin now, or renew, our claim to a ‘working-faith.’

 

By Cornell Cox

In honor of Gary Ridout: 

A Faithful Disciple, who – more than anyone I have personally ever known – has a working-faith.

An Essay for Black History Month, February 2022: 

Many hearts are hardened, yet to be liberated for ‘a more perfect union’ by the grace of God, which can only come from the wellbeing of man’s inner soul. 

By Cornell Cox

 

Original-1619-Sin

Hope Beyond Moral and Ethical Failure

 

 

One hundred and fifty-three years after the first slaves were brought on the American Continent, John Newton – in contrition, while slowly moving toward atonement for his transgressions as an enslaver and captain of slave ships –authored Amazing Grace, in 1772. But not until 1788, 34-years after he left the slaving profession, did Newton, an Englishman, fully acknowledged his transgressions in a public statement: “It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.” 

Slavery was outlawed in Great Britain in 1808. Slave trade there had been illegal since May 1, 1807 and here in the states not until January 1, 1808. However, slave trade continued, totaling some 12 million slaves being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, until 1865.

            Slavery went against basics of the Declaration of Independence, the very soul of humanity, and for certain to be cause for civil strife. 

 

Nikole Hannah-Jones writes: “In the 1860s, the “violent Fermentations” that [President] John Adams had predicted erupted into the Civil War, leading to emancipation and the resulting amendments that ended slavey and codified citizenship for African Americans. This was not freedom given; this was freedom earned. Some 179,000 Black men, 10 percent of the Union army, fought in the war. An additional 19,000 served in the navy. Black women participated too, most notably one well-armed conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman; a Union spy, she led as many as 300 Black soldiers in destroying a Confederate supply depot on the Combahee River on June 2, 1863. The legal status African Americans had fought hard for should have provided the standing to “protect one’s body and property” that had not been available to Black people before. But this is not what happened. Shortly after the war, President Andrew Johnson granted amnesty to many in the Confederate leadership. Free from the threat of the gallows for committing treason, these white men—such as General Benjamin Humphreys, who had fought against the Union at the Battle of Gettysburg and then became governor of Mississippi—assumed positions in the newly formed state governments and passed legislation known as the Black Codes. These laws were designed to reinstall something close to slavery. They required African Americans to sign a yearly labor contract to work for a white employer, blocked their ability to testify in court against a white person, and banned freedpeople’s access to and ownership of guns under the threat of a public whipping of thirty-nine lashes.             

African Americans pushed back. Many had held on to their wartime firearms and resisted the neo-Confederate government’s demand to disarm. They fought back as white state militias and paramilitary organizations worked closely with local governments to seize their weapons. Black people asserted, in publications such as The Christian Recorder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and The Loyal Georgian, that they had Second Amendment rights and that stripping them of their guns was denying them the right to self-defense. The Loyal Georgian quoted a report by an officer of the Freedmen’s Bureau saying that disarming Black people would be “placing them at the mercy of others.” 

As Black people defied disarmament, they scored some victories, but far too often they were outgunned, and they suffered brutal repercussions as they ran up against the unwillingness of federal officials and local Republican governments to enforce Black citizenship. The slaughter was facilitated by President Johnson’s removal from the South of Black troops, which had been a significant part of the occupying army and the line of defense between the freedpeople and white violence. In late 1865 to mid-1866, all the Black troops were removed from the South’s interior and sent to coastal fortifications, and by January 1867 they had been expelled altogether.[1]

 

Farther, in 1876 Reconstruction ended with the contested Presidential election, which put Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in office in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.

To this point and time, following the 250 years of slavery, beginning with emancipation, thus began 100 years of Jim Crow. During Reconstruction, and after, some educated Blacks made significant progress. Some 2,000 African Americans held public office, on all levels all the way up to U.S. Senate. Business and societal accomplishments were especially prominent in places such as Wilmington NC  and Tulsa OK – only to end in property annihilation and hundreds of human deaths, as a result of White supremist Insurrections: Wilmington, 1898, the overthrow of a biracially (Fusion Party) elected government and destruction of a thriving Black business  & Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black Wall Street, 1921, a destruction after which all insurance claims were denied.

With titular end of Jim Crow – the Civil Rights Act, 1964 and Voting Rights Act, 1965 – began a new era: as explained in The New Jim Crow book, wherein Michelle Alexander writes about slavery and ‘mass incarceration of Blacks’ being a part of this new epoch ­– now 57-years ongoing. (It is a book which has been reviewed and studied by echelons in the United Methodist Church.) Clearly slavery is the residual sin – the ongoing fissure in America’s society – that our community as-a-whole has not met face-to-face to deal with.  

As John Newton waited and waited, to offer full atonement for his sin, what about us? We sing the song Amazing Grace – of which few know the story. None of us ran slave ships or participated in chattel slavery. But, can we, at the least, acknowledge the full history of slavery, a cover over, white washed in some ways, or completely left out of initial historical recordings? Can we confess the comprehensive truth; most importantly the failures of our ancestral past that continue to haunt us; our lack of empathy for immorality wrought on humanity and untold generational, psychological grief? No individual bears responsibility for our ancestral past; we are accountable for our actions and inaction – ‘sins of omission’ as we go forward – to make sure we’re not complicit in perpetuating certain misdeeds. We can’t go forward conscientiously until we have acknowledged our truthful historical past, if you will, a confession, a full acknowledgement of our inherited past. 

Our past is inextricably intertwined with our current-day culture and politics, of which few can extract an unconscious bias, the original, latent sin – wherein our society lives religiously and politically, whether Democrat, Republican, Independent or nondescript. Religious leaders for most part have evaded the hard racial issues. Community as a whole has abstained from fostering important civil conversations for fear of incivility: always the ‘elephant’s in the room.’ Initiating important dialogue is made more difficult by conspiracies – leading masses ‘off reality’s cliff’ – promulgated by irresponsible media outlets, where profit trumps morals and ethics. So, how do we begin? How do we facilitate this critical conversation? We must! Otherwise, how long can we sustain a democracy without this important exchange: A conversation that must come from rational, ‘we the people.’ That’s because it takes more than just a few courageous men and women in leadership to believe in, maintain, be bound by a constitution, to secure a democracy. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt  write in their book, How Democracies Die: “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture. America’s efforts to achieve racial equality as our society grows increasingly diverse have fueled an insidious reaction and intensifying polarization. And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies.”[2] The shocking silence of craven politicians has proven a nonstarter; therefore, the initiative bears on ‘responsible constituents’ to initiate a ‘democracy saving dialogue’: A discourse that counters the vitriol rhetoric undermining our communal society and democratic republic. 

America’s history is of biblical import, a chapter yet to be written – in which more than 400 years of immoral, craven, and heroic characters will be recorded. With introspection, we may ask, “In which ‘character’ will each of us want to be recorded?” America is predominantly a Christian nation, in which I often hear “God is in control.” Which brings me to ask: “Heretofore, what part has God played in our past history?” “What will God be doing about it in the future?” “Is or will God be speaking for the need of our collective redemption?” So far as I know – throughout history – God only speaks through man; that leaves man with a momentous responsibility. Indeed, with freewill comes accountability to a God with truth, morals, ethics, reconciliation, mercy, and grace. 

Will our hearts now shutter? And yet, may we sing with validation, “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see.” Only, if we can clearly see and meet face-to-face, in approbation for all things honorable, moral, and ethical. If so, it will be the salvation for fellow Americans and our beloved country.

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[1] Hannah-Jones, Nikole ; The New York Times Magazine. The 1619 Project (pp. 259-260). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt