The Real Nature of Religion

101:8.1Be­lief has at­tained the level of faith when it mo­ti­vates life and shapes the mode of liv­ing. The ac­cep­tance of a teach­ing as true is not faith; that is mere be­lief. Nei­ther is cer­tainty nor con­vic­tion faith. A state of mind at­tains to faith lev­els only when it ac­tu­ally dom­i­nates the mode of liv­ing. Faith is a liv­ing at­tri­bute of gen­uine per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. One be­lieves truth, ad­mires beauty, and rev­er­ences good­ness, but does not wor­ship them; such an at­ti­tude of sav­ing faith is cen­tered on God alone, who is all of these per­son­i­fied and in­finitely more.

101:8.2Be­lief is al­ways lim­it­ing and bind­ing; faith is ex­pand­ing and re­leas­ing. Be­lief fix­ates, faith lib­er­ates. But liv­ing re­li­gious faith is more than the as­so­ci­a­tion of no­ble be­liefs; it is more than an ex­alted sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy; it is a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence con­cerned with spir­i­tual mean­ings, di­vine ide­als, and su­preme val­ues; it is God-know­ing and man-serv­ing. Be­liefs may be­come group pos­ses­sions, but faith must be per­sonal. The­o­logic be­liefs can be sug­gested to a group, but faith can rise up only in the heart of the in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ist.

101:8.3Faith has fal­si­fied its trust when it pre­sumes to deny re­al­i­ties and to con­fer upon its devo­tees as­sumed knowl­edge. Faith is a traitor when it fos­ters be­trayal of in­tel­lec­tual in­tegrity and be­lit­tles loy­alty to su­preme val­ues and di­vine ide­als. Faith never shuns the prob­lem-solv­ing duty of mor­tal liv­ing. Liv­ing faith does not fos­ter big­otry, per­se­cu­tion, or in­tol­er­ance.

101:8.4Faith does not shackle the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion, nei­ther does it main­tain an un­rea­son­ing prej­u­dice to­ward the dis­cov­er­ies of sci­en­tific in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Faith vi­tal­izes re­li­gion and con­strains the re­li­gion­ist hero­ically to live the golden rule. The zeal of faith is ac­cord­ing to knowl­edge, and its striv­ings are the pre­ludes to sub­lime peace.