Belief, Faith, and Divine Love

Belief and Faith are irrelevant, Love is not.

Faith is a very delicate issue. We believe, but we are never quite sure how to explain that belief, how to share that belief. It's incredibly important to us, and yet faith is by nature private. We face the reality of our isolation in our faith, for even when we celebrate together, the experience with the Divine is forever personal. Because of the vastly overwhelming experience, we find doubt when not directly interacting with the Divine. The overwhelming reality of the Divine, of the Gods, seems impossible when not directly interacting.

That doubt we feel is good, a blessing and not a curse. As long as we allow ourselves to doubt, we can continue to grow, and our understanding can continue to deepen. Only when we fear doubt, fear not having answers, do we being to obsess about rules, about security. We cannot have security in this world, and perhaps not in any. When we fear doubt and seek that impossible security, we give up an uncomfortable reality for a harmful illusion, an illusion that leads us to attempt to regulate the doubt out of our lives, to deny that doubt wherever it might be, and to try and force other people to believe the same as we do to hide that doubt from ourselves.

When we experience the Divine, the Gods, and feel Their love for us, there is no room for faith or doubt. However, we cannot stay in that safe place where we live in the Love of the Divine. Daily life interferes, with bills and duties and problems, drags us out of communion with the Divine and makes it hard for us to remember what that feeling was. It takes work to bring that feeling with us throughout our lives, to keep it even in situations which try our patience. At times, we even feel betrayed, because we cannot keep that feeling with us and cannot understand why.

However, the Divine can only act in our lives as we allow. The more we try to control and regiment the Divine, the more we lose the Divine. Love cannot be contained in a box only opened when it is convenient. Either we welcome the Divine into our lives, and allow ourselves to be swept away by the changes or we do not; but we can't live halfway. The Divine will love us the same, but we pull ourselves away and block the Divine off and refuse to be changed. And that love the Divine has for us will keep the Divine from forcing the issue, as well. After all, sooner or later we all return to the Divine. The hurry is only one-sided.

This is not to say we should surrender our lives to the Divine and take no control of what we do or what happens around us. We are the hands of the Divine, but we are also responsible for our own actions. We are called, not to inaction and passivity, but action, thought, and work. We need to accept our callings as active, and do our best to take the love of the Divine and share it with others not through proselytization, but through having large hearts and being loving ourselves. When we can do that, we can become better people and make the world a better place. When we accept the love of the Divine and don't take that love back into the world, we betray the Divine by not fulfilling our end of the bargain.

Belief is, in most cases, irrelevant. For when we have faith and belief, there is no room for doubt, for our hearts are filled with love. And when we do have doubt, clinging to belief while fearing to question robs us of a chance to learn, and grow, and understand that love and faith better.

Questions:
What does faith mean to you?
How do you handle doubt?
How can we embrace love of the Divine even when we doubt?