Faith, without works

Chapter 1, Faith without works is dead.

      I've sat wondering about religious traditions and teachings I've learned my entire life, and have often wondered: “What if we don't really understand what it means? What if those who are conservative, who go to church, who are the most vocal about their religious way of life are actually the ones whom the scriptures reference of being far from God? Maybe they are the ones who are sinning and offending God? Wouldn't it be wild if this entire time that for hundreds of years that Christians have taught that they know the truth of the mysteries of God, they are the ones the most wrong about it?”

    The first time I ever thought something along this line, happened to be during a testimony meeting at my church. A day we set aside once a month to give the members of the congregation opportunity to bear their testimony of what they know to be true in the application of living the gospel teachings. I always sat listening to others as they would begin by saying “I know this to be true...” and I would ask myself “How?”

    “How can they know anything to be true, except that which someone else physically has also claimed to know to be true? Is truth just becoming a relative trend? Like someone declaring a color to be green, and tells everyone “This color is green!” And then someone claiming to feel something within them witness that “Yes, the color is green. This is truth. I know it.” When in reality, in science, colors don't exist at all. So what this person 'knows' is relative to what it means in their life, not everyone's lives.”

 The Buddhists have a saying: “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

 In other words, just because you point and say you know that to be the moon, your pointing isn't the moon itself. Many cannot see the moon. Your pointing, and your words don't make it to be true. The existence that it was there before you, and that it will be there after you, makes it tangible. Its elements are organized into the shape of matter that it is, whether we know it to be there or not . The moon does not need anyone to point out its existence, for if someone wants to be aware of it they need only eyes that see and to look for it. They will see it, they will know its glow, they will learn of its existence, as will everyone else who peers into the sky from time to time. It makes its own existence known, and doesn't need the finger of anyone to point it out.

    I've taken that saying to heart. I don't need to point out any truth or claim that I know something to be true. I only need to live within the power of it, and not block others from seeing it, and in time the truth will make itself known. With or without my pointing to it.

    I've always referred to “faith” as an action word. A verb. Like run, breathe, eat. Faith isn't a thought or a hope. It isn't even a wish or desire. It is an action, made by a decision, with the surety of a specific outcome. No different than our lungs expanding instinctively because the surety of the outcome will be that it draws in oxygen. Faith is to act or react in any way because of a surety that the outcome will be specific to the needs of the person who is acting by faith.

    That's one of those lessons in life that is easier said than done. So I had to put it to a test.

    I have had a deep fear of needles. My heart will race, my palms will sweat, I will become dizzy because my breathing is rapid and shallow. The next step in this course of action will be to pass out. So what surety of an outcome am I expecting to be the result of having a needle stuck into me while at a doctor appointment?

    Ah, see, that's where we contradict ourselves.

    Logically I tell myself that the outcome is to simply have a sample of blood taken, or an injection made into the vein. Nothing lethal, it will be over quickly, and I'm not going to die from it. Then why do I react the way that I do about needles? It's as if I am anticipating certain death, and I haven't made my peace with the last person I yelled at that day so I'm not ready to die.

   That is worry. And it is a useless emotion that deceives us of being in control, but really our thoughts are not controlled in the outcome we intend by our action when we allow worry to take over. What a jerk worry can be. Am I going to let worry bully me around and distract me from acting in any way of an outcome that I may need to have happen?

    So I walked into a tattoo parlor once. I approached the owner of this place with an odd question. I said “I want a tattoo, but I don't want it to be visible. I'm not wanting art, I'm simply wanting the process of a tattoo to overcome my fear of needles.” He respected my honesty and suggested that I still decide on something for him to draw, and helped me to pick a color of ink that was close to my skin tone. I chose the word “Faith” and asked him to tattoo it on the inside of my right wrist. He handed me a bar to squeeze, and I kindly refused. I told him that I was there to overcome my fear. I know what the process will be, I know the outcome I have paid for, and I know that I am not in danger. I am 100% in control of this moment, so I want to overcome the physical response to pain by controlling my mental reaction to it. I sat down in his chair, I controlled my breathing, and I relaxed my hands. I laid my right hand, palm up, onto his work space and I closed my eyes lightly. I didn't want to flinch.  As I felt the first of the pain sear through my skin, I reminded myself that many people do this all the time, I did my due diligence of researching this parlor's sanitation, and I wasn't going to be maimed.

  By the end of it, the man thanked me. He said he was surprised, he misjudged me by my appearance and assumed I wanted a stamp on my ankle or low back, something 'wild to rebel' with, and would probably cry at the first experience of having a tattoo. But I didn't do any of those things. I didn't flinch at all, I didn't tense my body in any way, and because the ink was the color of my skin tone, he said it was his first “invisible tattoo.”

  I walked out of there as many people I'm sure do, feeling different. Feeling adrenaline. Feeling a life change. But for me, it was a step into a decision that would forever govern how I handle every stressful moment thereafter. It was an action, it was Faith put to work, of a surety to the outcome of the situation that I was in. I'm sure there are plenty of variables to worry about, to fear. But those are all useless distractions that would not help me get through it, or make time go in reverse to undo the decision.

  So I saw it through. And only then, could I really understand how others could claim to “know” something when they shared their testimony of a spiritual element. They came to that level of awareness of whatever it was that changed their life, after the event had occurred. When the outcome was made known to them. To know something is to have gone through it, to hope for something is to have yet to begin it. And to have Faith is to be actively within that moment without worry or fear distracting you from the end result.

   And so me, and my new invisible tattoo, became partners in a way. It isn't entirely invisible, especially when my skin gets more tan in the summer, the tattoo ink stays light like my winter pale. And I catch myself tracing the letters written across my wrist, remembering in many other painful moments since that day that I can control how I react to what is going on and I can stay focused on an outcome by controlling my choices. Talk about a cathartic way to overcome OCD.

   I had no idea just how much that one choice in my life would help me to overcome so many moments yet to occur.