THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RELIGIOUS FEELING AND FAITH
"Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord': shall
enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will
of my Father in heaven shall enter the kingdom of
heaven. Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord
did we not prophesy in thy name, and work many
miracles in thy name?' And then I will declare unto
them, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers
of iniquity!'
Matthew 7:21-23
How can a person who
lacks the true faith, or for that matter lacks
essential truths, appear zealous and dutiful in the
practice of their religion? From the muslim who kills
in the name of allah, to the thrice divorced born
again, or the contracepting Catholic--how can they
appear to be religious while failing to follow God's
commands? I recently stumbled upon an excellent
explanation for this in a book called
Letters To A Mother
by Father
Emmanuel Marie Andre.
"A
religious feeling is...of the natural
order. A religious feeling
is the natural consequence of being creatures, just
as respect for parents is natural to the child."
"The religious feeling, being natural to man, is
found in all men, faithful and infidels; for all of
them have these remains of respect for God which is
sometimes manifested by a religious act founded upon
truth---as for Christians, sometimes for a religious
act full of errors---as for the infidels and the idol
worshippers, etc."
"There are nations among which the religious feeling
is naturally very deep--among the Arabs, for example.
An Arab will never fail to say his morning prayer,
his noon prayer, and his evening prayer. From the
height of his minaret he hears the muezzin cry the
sacred formula: "La Allah...",etc...Here is religious
feeling in all its power."
"But
remember ...our nature is fallen in Adam. From a
fallen nature can only come a religious feeling
deprived also of vitality. Nature cannot rise again
from itself, and the purely natural religious feeling
definitely cannot bring man back to God nor take him
away from sin. So with all his natural religiousness,
one can keep all the vices that are unfortunatley
natural to him, too. One can be vain, a liar, a
thief.
Thus these are the
characteristics of religious feeling:
"It sees nothing, wants nothing, can do nothing
against sin....It adapts itself to everything, it
comes to term with everything, it falls in with
everything, it devotes itself to nothing.
On
the other hand faith is supernatural
...[f]aith is the
adhesion of our spirit to the truth revealed by God.
It is a good that does not derive from our nature but
which is given to it from above in order to heal it.
Faith is essentially purifying... It enlightens the
spirit, cleanses it of errors. It straightens the
fallen man, places him again in the way of God."
"The emotional revivalist often produces valuable
effects, but all revivalist movements are subject to
the law of diminishing returns. It is impossible for
men to live forever on the heights. A religion which
equates the emotional state with salvation is a
broken reed when the temperature drops. Much misery
has been caused by the evangelical doctrine that
Christianity is worthless unless it is the product of
a conversion which is always represented as a vivid
religious experience." Arnold
Lunn: Now I
See.
