In a recent conversation with a perfect stranger, I mentioned that I would be starting my Masters of Divinity at Harvard this fall, to which the perfect stranger replied, “That’s great, I just hope you don’t lose your faith there.”
Lose my faith? What a funny expression. Is that akin to losing your marbles, mind, hair, virginity or orthodontic retainer (I have personally lost 8 retainers, mostly because I forgot them in the napkins I threw away). The way he said “lose your faith” implied that it’s here one minute and then, whoops, gone the next, as if I have little agency in the matter.
Of course, I know what is meant by the expression. Critical questions and religious diversity, both hallmarks of a graduate education at Harvard, are viewed by some as potential threats to one’s faith- a slippery slope of reasoning, casuistry, and uncensored exposure that can lead to the total unraveling of a person’s faith.
I am continually shocked by the white-knuckled inflexibility with which some people hold their faith and the refusal to allow that faith to be probed in a spirit of intellectual honesty and existential integrity. However, that’s just my personal theological bent. What I actually find most appalling, and even belittling, about this claim is the phrase itself: “to lose faith.”
I wonder if this stranger ever considered that those “misplacers” of faith have faithfully renounced it, deliberately thrown it away, or salvaged only what was truly tenable in their lives, so as to make way for a spirituality that could abide worthy questions and wonderful diversity and the pervasive complexity of life?
Losing faith grants too much passivity and helplessness to what may range from a flagrant act of defiance to an intentional shift in ideology or consciousness. “Losing faith” may mean casting off what was once a psychological crutch, not real, organic, life-grown truth.
Instead of beginning from a place of absence, or from what it is suddenly missing from our tiny, solipsistic perception of one another’s spiritual life, why don’t we look at presence? What is growing in a human being and is it allowing them to realize their fullest, generative potential? In paying attention to what has been gained in one’s life, it is easy to recognize something holy, though perhaps unfamiliar, underfoot.
I do not mean to imply any disrespect towards religious convictions as such or to suggest that anyone should recklessly throw their beliefs away, particularly if they have proven genuinely life-giving. I simply object to the expression, “lose faith” for its inability to recognize and honor the varieties of spiritual experience that are possible for a human being. It seems that in all negotiations of religious identity there is a responsible party calling the shots, and even if you disagree with those shots, please, allow her that agency.
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