Faith and Faithfulness

 Many religious leaders emphasize FAITH, and it is all well and good that they do. However, faith is merely one aspect of something more fundamental: FAITHFULNESS.

If faith is an intellectual rational assent to a proposition, that assent can change. Reason is a slave to deeper motivations: if you want to believe something, you can find your reasons. Reason is a castrated impotent fop that is in bondage to the deeper realities of how human beings work. So if your faith is because you rationally consent to the idea that a god exists, it is fickle and useless.

FAITHFULNESS is a bond, a covenant, between one person and another. G-d, for everything else that He is, is also a person in this sense.

You COVENANT with HIM. You LOVE Him, and by love I do not mean merely an emotion. Emotions too change with the wind, human emotions are as fickle as Reason is. You are bonded with Him. You demonstrate faithfulness, not just faith, with Him and He shows His faithfulness to you. Love that is only an emotion is worthless. Love that is a bond: that is the love that matters. A mother (one would hope) does not merely love her child. She is bonded with him. She will attend to him through thick and thin, bad times and good. Her lot is cast with his.

The G-d of Sinai tells us time and time and time again, throughout the Tanakh (for Christians the Old Testament,) that faithfulness is a thing He values exceedingly highly. In fact many of his Commandments are expressions of how much He values faithfulness. Thou shalt not commit adultery: that is about faithfulness of one human being to another, their spouse. Some days you might not in fact love your spouse very much, but you must always be faithful to them. Not bearing false witness is a form of faithfulness to the community. Loyalty that goes much further than lip service. Loyalty in ACTION. The First Commandment, thou shalt have no other gods besides Me, is the ultimate expression of faithfulness to G-d. And He prefaces it by saying that He was faithful to you, Israel. He led you out of bondage in Egypt. G-d is faithful. Are you?

Faithfulness to G-d is a transcendent value that can and sometimes must overrule faithfulness to even the dearest human. The Torah states that even if your wife or brother induces you to worship other gods, you must report them immediately and at their stoning YOU must throw the first stone.

Why would G-d have you perform that wrenching act? An act that must fill your eyes with tears and your heart with agony? This is human thinking: doesn't G-d love me? Why would he make me do such a horrendously agonizing thing?

To say, that though G-d wants you to be faithful to your wife and family and community, everything comes second to faithfulness to G-d. And it has to be that way, because without faithfulness to G-d, the family and society and everything else will come apart. Keeping faith, keeping covenant, with G-d is FUNDAMENTAL. Everything whatsoever is second to it. The G-d centered society is a pyramid based on faithfulness to G-d, and if the base shatters the whole thing will shatter. First faithfulness to G-d, then faithfulness to spouse and family and faithfulness to community. If the base is right, the whole thing will be right.

G-d tells us over and over and over and over and over again that He values loyalty. Loyalties that are subjected to G-d's law and loyalty to Him first. Thank Him that He does! Can you imagine what situation we would be in if He didn't care, or changed His regard and care on a whim?

LIKE HUMANS DO?? What is more fickle than a human being?

No, He is not like that. His loyalty is constant to those who are covenanted to Him. Sometimes when adversity strikes we do not see that loyalty, but it is there, to all who keep covenant, keep faithfulness, to Him. Looking back on my life I see a constant thread of G-d's faithfulness, though I might not have seen it at the time and indeed it stretches back to a time when I was not at all faithful to Him and didn't even know Him. For the sake of my future self, He was faithful to the wretch that I was.

Even death does not break G-d's faithfulness. What is G-d's explanation for why he saved the Israelites from Egypt? Because He loved Abraham.

ABRAHAM HAD BEEN DEAD 400 YEARS! It doesn't matter. Elisha raised a man from the dead THOUGH HE HIMSELF WAS DEAD BONES! Doesn't matter. Even death does not end G-d's faithfulness. How many of G-d's people have been saved from a life of darkness because He loved one of their ancestors? G-d only knows. The prayers of those long dead have not lost their potency in His eyes.

G-d was at one point so angry with the Israelites that he wanted to destroy them utterly. Moses prayed that He would spare them for His name sake. Because Moses asked Him, He did not destroy them.

So do not tell me of your faith in an intellectual proposition. Do not tell me of your emotion of love. Tell me of your faithfulness, your covenant, to a person who is G-d. Be faithful with all your strength and soul.