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Michael Cohen holding "As A Man Thinketh" by James Allen
Faith
vs. Belief and Curating Information
In response to a question about
incorporating faith in a Passover seder with Jews of mixed backgrounds
attending, Rabbi Hoffman made a comment
that "faith is feminine, belief is masculine." I took that to mean that faith is receptive
and open. And belief is more rigid, more
certain. For more understanding, I googled "faith vs
belief" and found came up with a short, clear article, Alan Watts on the Difference Between Belief and Faith
by Maria Popova.
How to master the delicate dance of unconditional
openness to the truth.
From Watt's 1951 book The Wisdom of Insecurity:
A Message for an Age of Anxiety
"We must here make a clear distinction between belief
and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of
mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is
the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The
believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with
his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved
opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no
preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets
go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and
likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.
The present phase of human thought and history … almost
compels us to face reality with open minds, and you can only know God through
an open mind just as you can only see the sky through a clear window. You will
not see the sky if you have covered the glass with blue paint."
Thank you Alan Watts for that clear clarification. And thank you Maria Popova for curating
information on your site http://www.brainpickings.org
Last word " A man
should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be." -Albert
Einstein
Ole waiting
for Trufa
from:
OLE AND TRUFA (A Story of Two Leaves)
“Who
knows the reason one leaf falls and another remains?
But
Ole and Trufa believed the answer lay in the great love they bore one another.”
Issac Bashevis Singer
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