On "Losing Your Faith"

People keep talking about "losing their faith", as if faith is a thing that can be manipulated or set down or given away. I don't think of faith that way. I don't think of knowing God that way, if by "faith" we mean "knowing God."

Try thinking of it this way: Knowledge comes in many forms. One key form is called propositional knowledge. This is the knowing of facts. It's called propositional knowledge because we can state this knowledge in the form of a proposition. For example: "God exists" is a proposition. It is either true or false. It's a fact that can be known or not known.

However, when we talk about faith in God, we're not talking about propositional knowledge. We're talking about another kind of knowledge altogether. This kind of knowledge is called "Interpersonal Knowledge." It's the kind of knowledge that pertains to the knowing of a person, not a fact. For example, "I know my Mom." Obviously, knowing my mom is not the same thing as knowing facts about my mom. I can know lots of facts about Abraham Lincoln, but not know Abraham Lincoln. So, interpersonal knowledge is a very different thing. It comes from experiencing an interaction with another consciousness. So, if God is a Person--an actual Being with a consciousness of His own, then we can only get to know Him (or have faith in Him) through interactions with Him as a Being, not as if He is just a fact.

So, for those who claim to have "lost their faith," maybe this misunderstanding is why all the lessons we learned in church and through reading the Bible, etc., seem so flat now. None of them can account for faith in God. None of them can equal the sum total of Who God is. None of them can provide me with a relationship with a Being, only a set of flat, tasteless, colorless beliefs. What we'remissing is really recognizing that knowing God is more than memorizing a list of facts we about Him, just as my mom is more than memorizing a bunch of stuff about her. Knowing God requires recognizing He's a real Being, communicating with Him (reading His love letter to me--the Bible and praying and listening), and letting Him decide in what way He will be involved in my life. It doesn't come from trying to force churchiness into my life as a prop to help me make good choices as I struggle on my own in the world. He has His own ways of doing things and we can't force it anymore than I can force my mom to do what I want. I have to get to know her (and God) for who they are and, partially at least, on their terms.