Faith Requires A Supplement

Is love at the heart of things?  With Douglas Steere I believe it is, at least most of the time.  My faith, however, is never enough because it comes and it goes. I have faith about some things and not about others. Faith requires more than just “believing” or “trusting” that something is so. It requires a supplement.  Faith (defined as “complete trust or confidence in someone or something”) requires something else to enhance it, something else to make it complete.   Jesus said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to a mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”  What good does that do? How does transplanting a mulberry tree into the sea make any difference at all, or moving a mountain from here to there?  Faith is essential, but it requires a supplement.  That supplement, that which enhances “faith” (we can believe and trust the wrong someone or something) is “caring,” 

“I may speak,” writes the Apostle Paul, “with tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  I may have the gift of prophecy, and know every hidden truth; I may have faith strong enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing.”  Faith requires the supplement of “caring,” of “love,” or else it is simply a source of “power” that can be exercised in a thousand and one detrimental ways. If love is really at the heart of things, then my faith must  be rooted in, nourished by,  and supplemented by that love.

Tongues of men and of angels abound, sounding gong and clanging cymbals make a lot of noise, preachers preach and say they know every hidden thing, and they do it all with  a “faith strong enough to move mountains,” a faith without caring; a faith without love. What good is a faith like that?  What value is a faith that eliminates some people because they don’t act, believe, or look like the “faithful.”  Faith without the supplement is extremely dangerous because it uplifts the one who has it and dehumanizes those they deem do not have it.  

Harry Emerson Fosdick tells of a priest (a chaplain) in the first World War who was giving spiritual help to a dying Protestant boy when the boy said, “But Padre I don’t belong to your church,” to which the priest replied, “But you belong to my God.”  Faith requires the supplement of love.  Faith without this enhancement is destructive.