Sometimes it is helpful to see what something is
not in order to more clearly understand what it is. What does “faith” look like
that doesn’t stand up under closer scrutiny or doesn’t lead to positive,
helpful action and empowerment for life in the most meaningfully possible ways.
Bad faith is a version of faith that affects the operating system in negative
and unhelpful ways. It either collapses when confronted with new information or
perspectives or it is abandoned because it does not provide meaning or significance
when a person is evaluating changes in life. Bad faith is faith that does not “work”
in the real world. It does not stand up to the scrutiny of life issues and
challenges and crises.
1. Bad faith is based solely on unquestioned
authority. In other words, in bad faith a person believes
simply because an authority figure or structure tells them to. They don’t think
for themselves. They don’t question. They comply, thoughtlessly believing what they’re
told to believe. This “faith” is never internalized. It simply lies on the
surface of the mind or heart because they never had a part in the process of
developing it, they just received it from another source. It was never truly
owned.
This kind of faith is easily abandoned or
rejected when another authority comes along with what appears to be a stronger
argument or more persuasive reason. The Bible calls this kind of person “a reed
blowing in the wind.”
2. Bad faith is based on pressure or coercion. People in religious communities and organizations can be
susceptible to this approach to faith. Even in our culture, we are so used to
the subtle “tyranny of the majority” that we seldom buck it. Madison Avenue
(with all its slick advertisements telling us what we must have and why we must
have what they’re selling) has created a culture of consumerism. People watch,
buy, use, and discard mindlessly, never evaluating the true need, the issues
behind the need, and how what we buy contributes or doesn’t contribute to the
diverse range of global challenges. We are all largely unaware of the ways the
groups and cultures in which we participate pressure us to conform and chastise
us when we rattle the cage.
To the extent that a religion or ideology
operates in the same way, it is not real faith. Faith cannot function in that
kind of mindless atmosphere. Faith cannot be pressured or coerced for it to be
genuine and real. Faith must be allowed to emerge in freedom and encouragement
for it to become real and genuine and ultimately meaningful.
3. Bad faith often exploits the psychological
need for belonging. Maybe no one is coercing me
to believe, but if I am so desperate to belong that I will claim to believe anything
the desired in-group requires of me, how can my faith be authentic? I must
regularly evaluate my motives for believing. What is motivating me? What
internal needs am I trying to fill? Who am I trying to please and why?
4. Bad faith appeals to self-interest and base
motives. There are some evangelists who have actually
offered financial incentives to people to attend their events. (You get paid
for coming and staying through the whole meeting.) That is very blatant. More
subtly, some churches use the promise of wealth, health, revenge, power, pain
avoidance or easy solutions to all life’s problems to attract people to their church.
Or they use fear and guilt to motivate belief and faith.
But the sad truth is, belief and faith based
upon the desire to become rich, popular, comfortable, or to avoid hell or God’s
displeasure and so on, with no real desire for the true, the good, or the
beautiful, is not genuine faith. Jesus described that kind of faith as a house
built upon sand instead of rock. When the storm comes, the house collapses.
5. Bad faith is arrogant and unteachable. When a person takes pride in feeling “right” and rewards himself
with a sense of superiority, when his faith puts him in a high and mighty
posture to look down in judgment on others, it’s hard to feel that we’re
dealing with good faith. When the religious indulge in spiritual status-seeking—Look
at how much I give! Notice how much I suffer! Aren’t you impressed with my
knowledge, my piety, my zeal.—their desire for attention seems even more
disgusting than those who parade their material wealth in a quest for social
status. That know-it-all spiritual attitude; that pretended certainty that
makes one talk, talk, talk, but never listen; that obnoxious “you can’t teach
me anything I don’t already know” spirit; that “I’m right and you’re wrong”
attitude; these traits are ugly in the irreligious, pathetic in the religious.
6. Bad faith is dishonest. Faith with integrity is faith that admits you don’t have all the
answers. It’s faith that is honest with the evidence as far as is possible. It
is faith that upholds the highest human values like equality for all, justice
and compassion for every human being, respect for life and the natural
environment.
When I continue to recite the “party line” even
when that “line” goes against those highest human values, how can I have
integrity? Bad faith puts more emphasis on image and perception than on truth
and openness.
7. Bad faith is apathetic. Since genuine faith inspires action, if a person’s faith produces no
action, it cannot be healthy and good. If he or she cannot say that their faith
makes a difference in making the world a better place, if they would behave
just as they do without their faith, then their faith is bad faith, if it is
faith at all.
“Sometimes this lack of action is covered by a
surplus of talk,” writes McLaren. “Sometimes the jargon flows thick, like lots
of strawberry jelly on moldy bread. Sometimes people substitute the active life
of faith with the fascinating lore of faith, terminology, facts, opinions on
religious esoterica, and so forth. This immersion in words no doubt positions
them well to win at religious ‘Trivial Pursuit,’ but that’s about it. Who is
fooled by the barrage of words besides the talker himself?”
8. Bad faith is a step backward. If a person adopts a faith given to them by a religious
organization in order to be told what to think, believe and do, that faith is
really an excuse for immaturity. If a person is overwhelmed by advances in
science, by complexities in ethics, by gray areas in their personal life, and
they throw themselves into a religion that tells them easy answers so they don’t
have to think for themselves, their religiosity is an excuse for fear or
laziness, not a motivation for growth and courage. “Good faith ought to produce
good fruit; I ought to become a better person for holding it. A faith that
makes me less loving, mature, wise, alive, or responsible sounds to me like bad
faith.” (McLaren, pp. 34-38) Healthy people don’t step backward or down; they
only step forward or up. Healthy faith acknowledges both the mysteries of life
and the certainties of life and can live with some ambiguity and uncertainty.
Healthy faith embraces a both/and paradigm rather than an either/or. Healthy
faith acknowledges areas of weakness and courageously works at bringing as much
resolution and growth as possible. And then lives with what can’t be changed.
It is often the case that a person who says they
have rejected faith has in fact been turned sour by another person’s or group’s
example of bad faith. Lack of integrity and honesty and authenticity among
people who claim to have faith are strong determinants for how people respond
to faith at all. The great spiritual need of this world is for good faith exhibited
by honest people.
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