Faith is not Belief

You can believe in anything but the nature of faith, spiritually considered, is that you can only have it in something that is true.

This may not be the usual way of thinking but we are looking at faith as one of the theological virtues which are the virtues you can only get by aligning yourself with the reality of God. Faith in this sense is not an intellectual position and nor does it even come from experience as such though experience can awaken or boost it. But actually it comes from the knowledge of God in the heart. Therefore, it can only come to one who is already learning to face in the right direction.

Think of the reality of God as due north. A man while in this world can face towards any point of the compass. That's part of the nature of the earthly experience, the way things here are set up so there is room for choice. There are many alternatives on offer, some common, others less so, some no longer existing, others relatively new. But a properly organised, inwardly sound, correctly polarised human being will face north, perhaps not perfectly so at first but in that general direction. In this way he will have faith. His faith may be tentative at first, it may not arise dramatically, it will need to be worked on and developed but the seed of it will be there if he is facing in the right direction. If he is facing in the wrong direction then even if he has belief that is similar in form to the content of faith, it will not be faith because faith is spiritual and related to intuition. Intuition is the means of cognition of the soul which knows because it is. This is also how God knows. God does not think. He knows. His knowing and his being are part of each other, supremely simple in essence, and that is the state of the soul too when it is in a healthy state.

Today many souls are not in a healthy state. Indeed, many are very sick and they are so because they have turned away from God. The initial turning away is a symptom of an already present sickness in the soul and the consequent looking in the wrong direction will make matters worse. Repentance, which is the only remedy, requires reorientation, a turning round to face in the right direction. Look where your heart knows you should look and let the mind follow that instead of being the instigator of what you do or don't believe. This will retune your soul and you will have the faith which is knowledge by another name.