Certainty

I met a young man about to go off to college the other day; very bright, articulate, lots of potential. Somehow, we got on the subject of religion. He was at that place where a lot of us are, or have been - he was worried about his faith. He said so - in classic style, after sharing a few disappointments that piled up over the past year, he sighed and said "I think I've lost my faith". His struggle was familiar: After a childhood and youth during which he was brought up in a church setting, expected to believe like his parents, he is now at that stage where he has to make up his own mind and blaze his own trail, so to speak. He was looking for some evidence, some bricks and mortar, so that he could get back on track.

It got me to thinking about "faith": Can you lose it, misplace it, drop it under your car seat never to be seen again, or put it in a basement closet and forget about it? Can you shed your faith like you shed your skin, or lose it like you lose your hair?

And, now that my friend has "lost his faith", I wonder: What takes the place of the faith he once had?

My pal M. says, when faced with such issues, "You gotta get in the Word" - so if you look it up, Heb. 11:1 defines faith as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". More than "belief", this is a word implying something deep, abiding, palpable, and provocative.

Along those lines, I share one of the most meaningful things I've ever heard anybody say about faith. I was in the audience at one of those Cursillo weekend retreats when I heard a very wise man, J.M., say: "The opposite of Faith is not Doubt. The opposite of Faith is Certainty."