TRANSCRIPT
NB. I’d like to talk about what you think God is like (in a minute), but where you speak there about how people are not argued into a faith position, but they see somebody else. . ., I’m sensing a link, (I don’t want to put words into your mouth, of course but) I’m sensing a link – that a person’s belief should demonstrate itself consciously or subconsciously through their behavior and their attitudes and the characteristics and the character and the personality. Is that the way you see it?

RW. It has to be so, doesn’t it? Because when we read in the New Testament about faith, it’s most definitely not as we might just perhaps mistakenly think, i.e., something going on in your head. Faith is an attitude of trust which pervades your relationships and that second phrase “pervades your relationships” is the key thing – an attitude of trust towards God – which makes you a different kind of human being. And, if it doesn’t make you a different kind of human being, you might need to go back and ask, “What exactly is it I’m trusting?” or “How deeply do I trust?”, which is why you know the old quarrel between faith and works in Christian history. “Are we saved by one or the other.” is a bit of a red herring because it’s quite clear in the New Testament that yes we are not brought to be at one with God by our own efforts and our own successes only by the gift of God and that’s what we have to trust, but, as I say, trusting in that way makes us a different sort of person and that is a visible testimony.

NB. And again I’m sensing you’re differentiating between knowing facts about the Bible or about the character of Jesus or the patriarchs or the mosaic law. There’s a difference between knowing facts and committing of faith. You’ve used the word relationship a couple of times.

RW. I have indeed very deliberately so, because quite clearly in the New Testament when Jesus says to his disciples “Follow me.” he doesn’t first say, “Consider this set of propositions and just get back to me by email.” He says, “Come and spend time in my company; build a relationship.” and out of that comes the system of what we call Christian doctrine or Christian theology. People have been spending time in the company of Jesus, with the narrative of Jesus, with the Spirit of Jesus ,in the life of the community, and, bit by bit, they work out how to put the jigsaw together” what, then, must be true of God if this is the sort of thing that happens?

REFLECT

Nigel says, “A person’s BELIEF should demonstrate itself consciously or subconsciously through their behavior and their attitudes and the characteristics and the character and the personality.” And Archbishop Williams adds, “Faith is not just something going on in your head. Faith is an attitude of trust which pervades your relationships.”

The Archbishop is not saying that faith has nothing to do with your head, i.e., with your thinking, studying, listening and trying to understand what you “think” you believe, or what you think is the meaning of what you were told or what you have seen or read. What he is saying is that it doesn’t stop there. Faith is not just something going on in your head. Faith “leads to trust” and then slowly, you begin to see and hear things throught the “eyes” of the one trusted. And then, you begin to change and that change “pervades your relationships.”

Isn’t this how it went with the first disciples of Jesus?  He called them, “Come and see.”

And isn’t that how it goes with us when we learn about a person whom we have not yet met? First we hear about them and get an idea of what others think of them. Then we meet them and try to see if what was said is true. If we spend time with the person, listen, see, study, converse – “experience” them what is happening is that we are building a relationship with them.

PRAYER