Faith and Action

Regard­ing faith, I want to make it abun­dantly clear that I sep­a­rate faith from belief, as Bhak­tivin­ode and Paul Tillich among oth­ers have done. I may change my beliefs or have no beliefs, but I still have faith as we all do. We all have faith in some­thing, whether it is the nation, our shas­tras and gurus, our mat­tress or our sad­hana. Some­thing is our ulti­mate con­cern. The prob­lem comes when we place our faith in things that are not truly ulti­mate, like the nation, the cult, the sym­bols we use for the ulti­mate mys­tery, rather than the mys­tery itself. There will always be some exis­ten­tial doubt that remains so long as we are embod­ied. Our sad­hana is an act that entails our entire being and is an act of faith.

I was part of one reli­gion, the United Church of Christ, that is non-hierarchical and has no creed or dogma. In it’s prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion, it is far from per­fect, or I would still be with them. Yet, they do pro­vide a model for me as I pur­sue Chai­tanya Vaish­nav­ism. I see orga­nized reli­gion as a real prob­lem, but the fact is also, how does one even spread one’s teach­ings with­out some orga­ni­za­tion? I firmly believe in the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, but can reli­gion sim­ply ignore the attroc­i­ties of gov­ern­ment and remain silent? Can politi­cians not have a reli­gious, eth­i­cal ground­ing that is not repres­sive? Where is this all lead­ing, hope­fully to a time when we are all enlight­ened enough to live with­out gov­ern­ments, cor­po­ra­tions or religions.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 06:35 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.