Yesterday we observed that the virtue of Faith is, ultimately, belief in God.  But I also said that believing that God exists still is not true Faith.  So, what’s the deal?  What’s missing?

Answer: Trust.  Saint John Henry Newman said it simply: “Faith is trust in God” and “[t]o believe in God is to trust Him.” 

Now, to be sure, you cannot trust something or someone that you don’t first acknowledge exists.  To trust God, you must first believe He is real.  But that’s what logicians call a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.  Believing God is real is necessary for Faith; but by itself it is not sufficient for Faith.  It is only a first step; it only gets us part of the way.

Think about the example yesterday of your parents’ love and the money in their pockets.  If you had faith in either one—the money or their love—it wouldn’t just mean that you acknowledged that it was there, that it existed; it would mean that you trusted it to do something for you, to solve a problem for you, to protect you from something, to provide you with something you need.  In fact, the word “trust” itself comes from the Old Norse, traust, which means “help, confidence, protection, support.”  To have faith in my parents is to have confidence that they will come through for me when I need them—that’s trust.

And so, Faith being a matter of trust, is the difference between believing that something is true—”God exists”—and believing in whom or what is true—”I trust God with my problem, my need, my life.”

Now don’t neglect the importance of true belief—it is the foundation for Faith and keeps us from thinking that Faith has nothing to do with our minds.  But real faith is also a matter of trust—it is putting that true belief to the test.  C.S. Lewis put it this way:

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?” 

Have a wonderful day.