"Faith – Is it a Gift or a Delusion?"

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I remember a number of years ago I called an elderly friend of my sea captain uncle to console him on the loss of his wife of 62 years. He thanked me for the call and then he proceeded to tell me how powerful his loss was. He said to me, “I don’t know if you are a person of religion, but my strong faith tells me she has gone to God in peace and love.” I gently reminded him that I am a minister and was a person of religion, but I did leave out the part about being a UU minister and one who considers a broad range of theological possibilities.

That conversation reminded me of just how powerful faith is in many people’s lives. But the idea of faith is complex. In some cases, it provides hope and consolation. In other cases, it seems to provide a basis for bizarre beliefs. Just last week, I read a story about a Missouri congressman who believes there were giants on earth 6000 years ago when angles and humans mated. This is actually described in the Book of Genesis – Chapter 6.. The story says that angels mated with humans and produced these giants called the Nephilim. This congressman,, who has oversight over the Smithsonian, believes there is proof of this in the Museum’s basement and it’s being covered up. He say he is going to uncover it…….. In the worst of scenarios, faith provides justification for heinous acts such as terrorism

and we have all seen way to much of this.

As defined (in Wikipedia), “faith” is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, or an idea, or a thing. The word faith can refer to a particular religion or to religion in general. (Such as “What faith are you?”)

As with trust, faith involves a concept of future events or outcomes, and is used for a belief "not necessarily resting on logical proof or material evidence.” Sometimes the word faith is used in place of trust or belief.

Faith is often used in a religious context where it almost universally refers to a trusting belief in a transcendent reality, or in a supreme being and possibly this being's role in the order of transcendent, spiritual things. Faith is, in general, the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true. It is the belief that the believer has that what is declared is true, based on the declarer's authority and truthfulness. (And we have all seen way too much of this as well.) Perhaps the best know discussion of faith in Christianity comes from the Gospel of John written around the 90s CE (almost 3 generations after the death of Jesus.) In this Gospel it is said that over the course of several days following his death and resurrection, Jesus appeared to Mary and to several of his Apostles. (BTW - This story is not mentioned in any other gospel and the Gospel of John is way different

than the other three accepted Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke.)

In the Gospel of John Chapter 21, it says: “Now Thomas, one of the twelve called the twin, was not with them when Jesus had appeared to the others. So, the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in his side, I will not believe.”

“Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut but Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side; do not be faithless but believing.” And Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

I grew up taking many Catholic religion classes, both as a child and in a Catholic military high school. Hearing this story over and over, I tried very hard to have the type of faith that Jesus was talking about – at least what he reportedly said in this Gospel. In other words – believe because you have been told something purported to be religious truth by a religious authority – and don’t question what you have been told because “blessed are those who have not seen yet believe.”

In the end, though, I could not believe and as I began a long spiritual journey from Christianity and through the world religions, I realized that I cannot have faith in anything unless it makes sense to me and it appears to have historical accuracy and meets the test of being rational. To me, this doesn’t mean there needs to be definitive proof of something to have faith, it just means it must have some semblance of rationality to it and it must make sense after I have researched the possibility.

It isn’t just Christianity that relies on faith from its adherents. Actually, every religion to some degree requires faith. Buddhism, for example, requires a degree of faith and belief in the possibility of enlightenment. Faith in Buddhism centers on the understanding that the Buddha was an “Awakened Being.” Buddhist faith

also accepts the role of the Buddha as a superior teacher, his teachings about the truth of his Dharma (spiritual Doctrine), and in his Sangha (the community of his spiritually developed followers). Buddhist faith is intended to lead to the goal of Awakening or Enlightenment or Nirvana – a kind of merging with ultimate reality.

In my view, the less knowledge a person has about the world and creation, the easier it is to have faith in religious doctrine – however human made it all most certainly is. A few summers ago, I visited Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts which is a replica of the original Pilgrim village and the Indian settlement that was set up right next door by the local Indians to monitor what the Pilgrims were doing. ***(Plymouth Colony was 1620 to 1691 and along with Jamestown the first of the English settlements. The Spanish has already been in America for a century).

Many of the Pilgrims could read but they certainly were not well educated. (And they certainly were not good hunters or gathers or even builders. If it wasn’t for the Indians and Chief Massasoit, they would have starved!)

Over the course of the previous decades, the Pilgrims had developed a brand of Protestant Christianity that was as simple in belief as it was absolute. The world was a certain way according to the Pilgrims and their beliefs. Their faith system was unassailable and there was no separation between their religion or their daily

way of life or the way they were governed.

I call people and groups like the Pilgrims “two dimensional” because these type of people only see the world in the dimensions they look at. An imaginary two-dimensional creature, for example, could see length and width but they could not see height. Though the third dimension clearly exists, a two-dimensional creature would be unable to perceive it. Their faith in the reality of their world and the universe is based solely on their understanding of length and width. We might call this type of faith simple or uneducated because we have had the opportunity and knowledge to see the third dimension and to realize reality is not just two dimensions. (Although there are a lot more dimensions we cannot perceive!)

One of the great challenges to religious faith is knowledge because knowledge begets uncertainty. In my experience, the more I learn, the less I seem to know of reality. If anything, knowledge provides more and more understanding of the complexities of reality and it makes it difficult to accept simple explanations such as – “this happened because it was the will of God.”

In general, fundamentalists religions display a similar type of simple faith – a faith that accepts as a given, religious creeds and dogmas and a worldview without questioning anything. No better example of this can be given than the thousands of young Muslims (men and woman) who have killed themselves during the past decades as they have killed others in suicide bombings, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan and many other Muslim countries. Their faith told them that their acts of terror and suicide are holy and blessed by God even though the Qur’an expressly prohibits suicide and the killing of innocent people. Fundamentalist Muslims twist their own scriptures – just as the scriptures of other religions are twisted to prove a particular set of beliefs. I thought about this often when I was serving in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 rebuilding the country’s transportation system. During meetings in the Embassy in the Green Zone, from time to time, we would hear an explosion which was a suicide bomber – most often a young person killing themselves as they tried to penetrate the guard posts. Part of the problem with what I term “simple faith” is that often times people want to believe what they are told is a religious truth. Believing that you understand why things happen the way they do; believing that taking a certain action or actions in life will lead you to eternal bliss or to enlightenment is comforting

particularly if your life is difficult or you are experiencing emotional stress. Such faith enables people to endure great hardships and great tragedy and it gives confidence that, in the end, all will be well because the universe has ordained it to be so.

This is also why some people refuse to question religious beliefs and why people refuse to educate themselves on the history and formation of their religion and their religious scriptures. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing for knowledge will, in the end, create uncertainty and uncertainty often leads to fear and a loss of faith. As faith is lost, a person can experience fear because their worldview and their ability to cope with the world can be severely challenged. I have often met very intelligent, well-educated people who work in scientific or engineering professions where they explore and challenge scientific and engineering theory every day and, in so doing, they broaden the frontiers of human knowledge and yet, at the same time, some of these same people blindly accept religious doctrines, creeds, and scriptures without question. It is as though they live in two worlds – one of science and the rational and one where only acceptance and blind faith apply. Importantly, although I always find myself questioning religious beliefs, I always endeavor to be respectful of other people’s faith because their faith is, indeed, a way that many people cope with the hardships and tragedies of life. If someone who has lost a loved one believes that “God has taken this person to be with him in heaven,” I might personally find this illogical and irrational, but I am not going to express my doubts to this person. I usually find myself simply reassuring the person that their faith has meaning. (I did this with my uncle’s friend who lost his

wife.)

So – there is another important question to ask with regard to religious faith – particularly as a Unitarian Universalist. Can a person have religious faith despite the fact that they cannot accept any particular religious philosophy or creed? I think the answer can be yes but it really depends upon your general worldview. To begin with, it depends upon a person’s fundamental viewpoint of the universe we live in. It depends upon how a person answers three questions:

1. Is there something more to the universe than what we perceive through our

understanding of science, technology and observation?

2. Is there meaning and purpose in the universe?

3. Is there meaning and purpose to my life?

Most religions – even non theistic religions such as Buddhism conclude that there is something more to the universe than what we humans can perceive. In other words, there is another reality. Certainly the “God religions” such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam believe that God exists outside of the universe and God is the creator. But one does not have to believe in a separate creator being to believe that there is more to the universe than what can be perceived. God can also be viewed as a force or reality imbedded into the fabric of the universe we see and know and experience. In this view, there is “God” but God is merely part and parcel of the universe and all the physical laws, and energy and matter that form the universe. Actually – this is what Hindus believe in their concept of Brahman.

As to whether there is meaning and purpose to the universe, this is a critical question to faith. The idea that there is no meaning and purpose to life is embedded in nihilistic philosophy discussed at length by numerous philosophers including Fredric Nietzsche. I find nihilism to be rather depressing to say the least.

I for one simply cannot accept it because it is, to me, both illogical and irrational given the magnificent order and beauty of the cosmos. If a person believes that there is no sense of meaning and purpose it is rather difficult to have faith in ultimate realities that are beyond human perception.

I mentioned in a previous sermon that astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle once said “We see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly miniscule as to make it absurd. It then becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate…It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect higher intelligence….even to the limit of God…..such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific.”

As to whether or not there is meaning and purpose to my specific existence, this too is a critical component of faith. To begin with, consider the question - is my particular existence as a person a random happening or is it part of some grand design I am unaware of? This is obviously a really fascinating idea to ponder. From strictly some scientific standpoints, each of us is a random happening brought about by trillions of random happenings since the beginning of time. In other words, this theory suggests that my particular existence as a person and yours is a fantastic chance event. Just to consider one of a trillion random happenings – if one of your 16 great, great, great, grandmothers had not met your great, great, great grandfather in the particular way she did and happened to conceive your great, great grandmother on a particular day through a particular circumstance, the continuing chain would have halted and you would not be here today. Was this all by chance or is there some unknown or unknowable force at work that enabled all of this to be so? We cannot know this but the question is a fascinating one and it demands faith one way or the other because the answer is unknowable. To say it was just a random event is no more true than saying your existence may have been designed. Either way – it is a matter of faith. In my, perhaps, very human view, there is another component to meaning and destiny and faith in the universe and that is the idea of ultimate justice. If there is meaning and purpose in the universe, is there also justice? Why should I have been born in an affluent country, into a good family, been given the blessings of a great education and great career opportunities when there are so many in the world who have nothing and will die young in poverty, hopelessness, and despair? If there is meaning and purpose and justice in the universe – how can so many suffer? Is it just a random chance happening that I have all that I do? Did I just luck out in the countless random happenings in the ebb and flow of the universe or is there something more I cannot perceive and cannot understand? Obviously, these are very, very difficult questions and the answers are very hard to come by. Traditional religions develop answers for these questions through scriptures, creeds, dogmas and belief systems. But if I cannot accept these human made religious belief systems and the faith they support – can I still have faith too?

My answer is that I can. It is true that I respect and am fascinated by the religions of the world. I have studied all the major religions of the world and have marveled at many of the ideas and beliefs that they express. Still – I find that all of them are human made and, accordingly, do not express ultimate truth. Within them there seems to be ideas that I resonate with that have enabled me to have faith – even though I don’t have

faith in specific beliefs or creeds.

I do believe that science and scientific observation are critical in understanding the reality of the universe, but I do not think that science can or ever will answer ultimate questions because science and human thought are finite realities. There is, in my view, something greater in the universe then we can perceive. I call this the “God Event.” I do not pretend to be able to define it except to say I believe it is imbedded in the fabric of the universe. Perhaps it is, as the Buddhists say, the ultimate reality – the oneness of all things. Perhaps it is true as the Islamic mystic Al Hallaj said – God and I are one” or as the Tao Te Ching states, “the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.”

As to meaning and purpose – I think there is ultimate meaning and purpose in the universe. The very reality of evolution tells me that meaning and purpose are at work every day in the living world and in the universe at large. The love of a father and mother toward their newborn child, the determination of an athlete to succeed, the passion and gifts of an artist, the need for humanity to explore the unknown – all of these, and more, are indications to me that there is meaning and purpose to the universe. I see it every day in my life. And just as my faith tells me that there is meaning and purpose in the universe – this tells me that there is meaning and purpose in my life and my existence and so, through continual searching and through meditation and prayer, I try to continually find meaning and purpose to my life and, in turn, to try to impart a positive difference in the world around me.

Am I a random chance happening or am I here as a person from specific happenings? In other words, was I destined to be? This is where the questions become impossible to answer but somehow, I do believe I am part and parcel of this magnificent creation, and in some way, I was destined to be. I don’t want to begin to describe why I believe this is so because to do so would create yet another human mad religious belief system – so I let it go with a faith that my life does have meaning and purpose.

And finally – is there justice in this universe? Wow – what a hard question to answer since all around us, we see and live with injustice every day. But, in the end, I believe in ultimate justice – not in the sense that there is a heaven for good people and a hell for bad people but through a sense that just as the universe continually evolves for the better and from our primal beginnings human beings have developed compassion, love, and justice – so too do I think the universe is ultimately just. I don’t know just how this happens, nor when, but I believe it does in ways we cannot know.

Faith is a very personal thing. Often it is based on the ideas and beliefs of a particular religion – but it is still possible to have faith without accepting particular human made creeds and dogmas. A number of years ago as I stood in Sloan Kettering hospital watching a friend of mine dying from cancer, I told him that in the end, everything would be OK. He said to me, “but you are a crazy unbelieving UU minister, how can you say that?”

As I began to answer the question, I realized the faith that was really alive within me. “Because,” I said, “I know - all I can say is that somehow I feel it and I know everything will be OK.” He died shortly after.

C.J. McMahon

UUMH

August 2025