"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen."
Hebrews 11:1
For now, all I'll say about "things hoped for" is
that they are inherently subjective: they change, often quickly, within us as
individuals, and of course they differ greatly between us as individuals.
"Things not seen" are different. That phrase seems objective (at least to
those of us blessed with eyesight).
"Things not seen" can be inferred to mean things impossible to
perceive and, so, things at best imagined and perhaps only taught but not
understood.
Another way to understand “things not seen” – that they are just
invisible things – opens the door to experience as evidence. Even
the late Christopher Hitchens – an atheist who said, “what can be asserted
without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” – accepted human experience
as evidence: “I think everybody has had the experience at some point when they
feel that there's more to life than just matter.” Hitchens believed, famously, that experience
is different from faith: “To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience
is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.” He was speaking of blind faith. Faith is not blind – indeed, is best found –
when it is based on one’s own experience.
What people experience cannot be seen. Except for somatic markers like heartrate and
brain activity, what we experience cannot be detected, let alone seen, using a
magnifying glass, telescope, microscope, EEG machine, lie detector, or any
other device. Yet experiences, physical
and emotional and even in dreams, are real. Joy, grief, relief, fear, triumph, pain,
fatigue, hunger, thirst, frustration, guilt, temptation, ecstasy, conviction,
intuition, curiosity, yearning, peace, love and hate and imagination – our own
and others' – are all real. Many experiences
are familiar to all of us and can be evoked by others – not just by artists, leaders,
and poets. But experiences are
inherently personal, not objectively discernible in any detail – and usually
hard even to describe with precision.
What I call the spirit within each person is such an
experience. That shared spirit – which I
call the Holy Spirit – is the realm of invisible, unmeasurable, personal experiences
of “more to life than just matter.” It
is intuition, conscience, compassion, connection, devotion, judgment. In its most familiar and important aspect, the
Holy Spirit is love – an experience honored by Hitchens thus: “A life that
partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood,
literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the
liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless'.”
To call faith "the evidence of things not seen" is not to assert that people should substitute anyone else’s experiences for their own. It is to equate faith with honoring one’s own experience.
