So you “believe”?

So what?!

You have “faith”?

So what?!

What have you done with your “belief”?!

What does your “faith” do for you?!

…and more importantly, what do your “faith” and “belief” do for others?!

Churchianity has wrongly taught the world that belief is accepting facts read from a book or heard from a pulpit. And that faith is trusting in some old man in the clouds (and who bears a striking resemblance to pagan Jupiter but supposedly isn’t) trusting him to save us from fiery damnation, or simply to make us happy, to feel better and help us cope with harsh realities.

Christian faith and Christian belief are much like a rocking chair. They aren’t good for much but personal relaxation. And using them will keep you moving but never really getting off the porch.

Contrariwise, the Good Book provides a profoundly opposing view of faith and belief…

Biblically speaking faith and belief (both words being colloquial terms) are emuna and bitachon. Though Hebrew words aren’t as simplistic as English, and each is an essay in itself to cover the full meaning, the short of it is that emuna would have been better off being translated as “fidelity” rather than rendered as “faith”. And bitachon should have been more properly reproduced as “relying upon” or “acting based upon” rather than “faith, trust, belief”.

Our English words hold way too much French and Latin history but moreover, way too much Greek emphasis and view. Greek thought process. And that mindset derails our whole view of what we are reading in Scripture and what we are supposed to be getting out of it.

Faith and belief, come with a Greek view of something you have, something you hold, something you use…but almost never something that you are or something that you do. Or even moreover, something you are based on that something that you do.

Emuna is an action whereas faith is a feeling and a thought. Bitachon is an action aswell but belief is just a feeling and thought. Being generous we will say faith and belief are a series of thoughts and feelings. But nevertheless, they are all immaterial, intangible ideas.

What we were commanded to do is not to believe and have faith but to practice emuna and bitachon. We were commanded to live in accordance with the Divine Instructions and how we live them out is emuna. We were told to perform actions in accordance with the Divine Promises and that is bitachon.

But faith and belief?

If we are relying on faith and trust we might aswell go full Peter Pan and add in pixy dust, for all the good sitting around thinking and feeling about spiritual matters will do for us.

Get out of the rocking chair.

Get off the porch.

And go out into the world to live the Divine Instructions.

THAT is what the Good Book calls for. That is emuna and bitachon. That is where the thoughts and feelings in our heads and hearts meet the harsh realities of life and living.

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