Belief Versus Faith – Stages of Faith Development

 

Belief versus faith is a question that returns to me in my continuing stages of faith development.  I write these blog posts about belief versus faith in order gain deeper spiritual guidance from within.  On the spiritual journey you will spiral upward and downward and return to find deeper meanings in words and phrases that make their presence known to you again and again.  Such a phrase for this writer is belief versus faith.  The kind  of spiritual guidance that I invite to arise from exploring this phrase is not much attained from books or scripture.  However, phrases from those sources often prompt the search for deeper experiential  meaning around this question of belief versus faith.

 

For this writer and storyteller these words, belief and faith seem interchangeable to many people. When one studies various stages of faith development writings you will find that often writers use these words interchangeably.  However, there are certain other writers  who are very clear that the words belief and faith designate two different experiences. Allow me to share with you a passage from The Five Stages of the Soul by Harry R. Moody and David Carroll.  Here is what is written about that stage of spiritual development referred to as ‘the struggle.’ It is subtitled “The Struggle of Faith and Doubt.” Here is what is written

 

If we’ve come this far, and if we find ourselves in a spiritual Struggle of some kind we must believe in something.  Why else would we make these efforts?

At times it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what we believe. But then, there’s something, some presence deep in our blood that keeps calling, keeps whispering instructions

we can’t entirely make out, hinting that the only road to self-contentment is through the very thing we can’t see or define; something, as a master remarked,

that wouldn’t leave us to our dreams and let us sleep in peace.

 

Contrast the above passage with the following quotations.

 

When you know there is no need to believe.

– Carl Jung

I am not a believer. You only need to believe when you don’t know.

- Jeddu Krishnamurti

 

It seems to this writer and storyteller that there are different stages of faith development here that might be better shown as:

 

1. Belief

2. Faith

3. Knowing

 

Belief versus Faith – The Etymology of word Belief

 

The word belief is broken down into two components. These are ;

 

1. Be

2. Lief

 

This is what the New Oxford Dictionary of English says about the adverb ‘lief.’

 

“archaic, as happily; as gladly: he would just as lief eat a pincushion.

Origin Old English leof ‘dear, pleasant’, of Germanic origin: related to leave and love.”

 

The word be is related to being. Neither of these words be or lief is a noun.  Each indicates a state which is related to happiness, to pleasure and love. Nowhere does the origin of the word belief indicate that here is some kind of something that you are to cling onto.  This then is the issue for this writer and storyteller.  The way the word belief and faith are made interchangeable is a misnomer.  In fact, the way in which the word belief is used for the most part is not a verb but a noun.  It is something the individual chooses to have as opposed to faith, which is the movement of trust in the no thing that creates all things.  This is the stage of faith development that knows life as a verb rather than as a noun.

 

This is what many believers do with religious teachings.  Spiritual words of wisdom are made into things that are then professed as belief. This is a stage of spiritual development referred to by Dr. Scott Peck in Further Along the Road Less Travelled as the “Formal/Institutional” stage.  Most of the religious believers of the the world religions are at this stage of spiritual growth.  They believe in the writings of their adopted set of scriptures.  They take the teachings of these scriptures as literal gospel.  They belong to a group and they often feel threatened by other groups who believe in a different set of writings. If you question their set of beliefs they often feel threatened and in many places in the world they react by threatening you.

 

Belief versus Faith – What is Beyond Belief?

 

Belief is the adoption of a fixed idea or construct.  That is, it is an attachment to a noun.  The belief as a mental construct is something to believe in but it is not a verb in the sense that it is moving.  The next stage of spiritual development and growth that is beyond belief is that stage I personally refer to as ‘Faith.’ This stage of faith development  is the stage of spiritual development that is characterised by direct knowing.  When one enters the stage of faith development called knowing there is no longer a requirement for the something to believe in.  There is, however, the longing to deepen the connection to that which is known -  not in any intellectual sense, but known in a sense of unification.

 

When Harry R. Moody and David Carroll write:

 

If we’ve come this far, and if we find ourselves in a spiritual Struggle of some kind we must believe in something…

 

Personally speaking, this need to believe in something is a stage two Formal/Institutional spiritual development stage.  It is where the individual adopts a formal and institutional statement of belief  or creed that they take from authority outside themselves.  This happens throughout the world in various religious and we see the results in religious wars.

 

Belief versus Faith – What is Faith?

 

Let me state here my understanding of the word faith and the connection between the belief versus faith issue.  Throughout this personal development and beyond blog I tend to transpose the words faith and trust.  For this writer the word faith means that you do not know whereas the word belief is often an indication that you do know when in fact what you know is simply what you know about.  When I say that I do not know, I am not writing about knowledge which is related to any intellectual understanding.  For example, I do not know what the experience that arises from the spiritual instruction:

 

Be still and know that I am God.

 

I can say that I trust the practice of stillness to reveal to me that direct experience that I refer to as knowing.  Indeed I have had the experience of the grace to be the knowing of that stillness that is the direct experience of God.  If I simply say that I believe in the word of God then that does not give me the opportunity to move into what is beyond belief and into the knowing of the living word.  The individual who is willing to give up belief for unbelief is in fact moving into the higher stages of faith development,  even though the vast majority of religious believers will claim that such an individual has been lost to the fold.  This stage of unbelief is what Dr. Scott Peck calls the Skeptic/Individual stage of faith development.  This does not necessarily mean that you leave your attendance of some formal and institutional religion, but it does mean that you begin to question the rigidity of any religious dogma you have, up to that phase of spiritual development, been deeply attached.

 

Beyond formal and institutional belief and unbelief is the individual who has attained to the stage of spiritual development referred to as the “Mystic/Communal” stage. This is the stage of faith development of an individual who is at least, in part, the knower.  This is the individual who has arrived at the ocean of Love  and sees the infinite possibility that has been graced them in living their one wild and precious life.  This is the knower who can honestly say that life, and their life of becoming who they are intended to be,  is beyond belief. This blog post is this writer and storyteller’s personal reflection on this question of belief versus faith.  This question of belief versus faith returns to me and asks me to become clearer about it. It is not my place to try and pull people out of their belief systems.  It is, however, my wish to invite them into stages of personal and spiritual development that  keeps calling them to be and to lief.  This is to live from being rather than from the separate sense of self attached to a formal and institutional way of life.

 

Anyone wishing to avail of a some free spiritual guidance with this writer and storyteller is free to contact me at storyteller@tonycuckson.com for support on the individual spiritual journey into living you ‘one wild and precious life.’  This free spiritual guidance will be conducted using Skype.

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