Faith vs Works

QueryGuy

QueryGuy

A guy who's Baha'i
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I know this question has been debated to death in other arenas, but I still find it interesting every time I come across it:

What is more important to religion and/or spirituality: Faith or works?

By "faith" I mean belief in your spiritual discipline, whether it's actively theistic (Judaism, Christianity, etc.) or not actively theistic (most eastern schools of thought). By "works" I don't just mean morally good or bad deeds, but also things such as ritual prayer or meditation.

Obviously, my question is not intended to apply only to monotheistic religions. No matter what your religion/spiritual preference is, please answer the question as it applies to your own belief system.

QG
 
IMO what we believe has always been of far lesser importance than what we do.

I'm not sure whether I'd class prayer and ritual as "works" - I'd suggest this applies strictly to how our lives and behaviour affects other people.
 
For me it's simple; when faced with a moral decision, do I do the right thing?

I believe that the best way to put myself in a position to do the right thing consistantly is by loving God. This almost makes it sound like religion is more the means than the end, but I don't think it works out that way. By living that way, the spiritual aspect grows and becomes stronger. It also strengthens the connection to God which feeds the spritual even more. An analogy has come to mind. It's like I am earth and the spiritual life is a plant that grows from the earth. Doing the right thing is like water and God is the sun. The sun and earth are always there. If I plant a spiritual seed and water it, a beautiful plant will grow.
 
Namaste all,


thank you for the post, QueryGuy.

fortunately for me, my religious belief happens to coincide with my understanding prior to my religious belief... it's not what we "believe" that matters, its what we do.

are we charitable, are we compassionate, are we honest are all more important than do we beleive we are compassionate, do we believe we are honest, do we believe we are charitable.

i think that alot of the responses to your query will be reflective of ones theology or ideations concerning morality as such, i would expect that you'll get a broad range of responses.
 
well?

well, wouldnt it make more sense to say that..doing a good deed is relative to doing a bad one? by that i mean, good and bad are only aspects of our mundane reality, the problem then..is that god is above us(transcendental), so to understand god better do we cultivate good alone? no..there also has to be an active cultivation of the mind aswell..this doesnt neccesarily mean meditation or really any concious activity inparticular, it could simply mean being mindful of every moment, because being mindful of every moment you are aware of the divine presence at all times, ofcourse this is alot more difficult then it sounds, but there are tools to cultivate the mind, like meditation

amitabha
 
QueryGuy said:
I know this question has been debated to death in other arenas, but I still find it interesting every time I come across it:

What is more important to religion and/or spirituality: Faith or works?

By "faith" I mean belief in your spiritual discipline, whether it's actively theistic (Judaism, Christianity, etc.) or not actively theistic (most eastern schools of thought). By "works" I don't just mean morally good or bad deeds, but also things such as ritual prayer or meditation.

Obviously, my question is not intended to apply only to monotheistic religions. No matter what your religion/spiritual preference is, please answer the question as it applies to your own belief system.

QG
Click to expand...

Interesting question - but I'd say it breaks into *three* parts - faith/belief - the mental part of a spiritual path, works - the "secular" part - what you do in "real life", and *ritual* - the activity within the scope of the path, not just the two you mention.

The impression I had growing up was that the religion I started in had the order of importance: ritual/faith/works, while I tend to put them in the exact reverse order.
 
Kindest Regards!

I believe it was Frank Lloyd Wright who said, "form follows function." What I get from this is that substance trumps appearance. Stated another way, the paint job on your car isn't what gets you to where you want to go.
 
juantoo3 said:
Kindest Regards!

I believe it was Frank Lloyd Wright who said, "form follows function." What I get from this is that substance trumps appearance. Stated another way, the paint job on your car isn't what gets you to where you want to go.
Click to expand...
Namaste Juan,

in our tradition we have a saying about form as well... "form is emptiness and emptiness is form...."

i like your restatement :) i'd restate it like this...

the menu is not the food.

and/or

the map is not the territory.
 
Plants and fruit...

I like Shih Yo Chi's analogy about the growing of a plant, but I would actually take the opposite approach and say that the good works and good decisions are the fruit that come from faith, which is the plant. Yes, it's possible to have good works without faith, but I would submit that the kind of works that come from faith are far superior to those which do not.

Compare Jesus with Pharisees to see what I mean. The Pharisees, being legalists, built their lives around the idea of good works (i.e. following the Mosaic law to the letter). Jesus, on the other hand, built his life around his faith in God the Father's love, compassion, and caring for his creations. The good works of the Pharisees were limited; as Jesus points out, they gave great burdens to the Jews but did nothing to help them carry such burdens. The good works of Jesus were not limited: he didn't even withhold his life for what he believed in and, as he said the night before he was crucified, there is no greater love than to die for one's friends.
 
Marsh, After thinking about the analogy more, I think you are right. My experience came from losing my traditional faith (Christianity) and growing without knowing what my faith was. Since I couldn't (and didn't try) to put a lable on my faith I think I've underestimated the effect that it had on my actions. I've only recently became aware that my faith was important to me.

My only comment on the Pharisees is that I wouldn't always consider trying to follow a set of rules (Mosaic Law) to the letter, to be doing the right thing. The Pharisees seemed to me to be very self serving, whereas Jesus' work was, as you state, full of love, compassion, and caring for his creations. Hard to go wrong if you live by that creed.

The danger in my line of thought is that doing the right thing is so subjective. I'm sure plenty of horrible acts have been carried out by people who thought they were doing the right thing. That brings me back to agreeing with your approach since a person who had made an effort to create a spiritual life would more likely make better decisions when attempting to do the right thing.
 
surely acts are more important. i guess my vote stems from the emphasis i place on this world and those who live here. our actions/words can benefit or injure others, and through these actions we make an imprint on the world and are remembered once gone. those who are affected by our words and actions can't read our minds, or know what beliefs we hold unless we tell them. but they can be helped and the world contributed to by the things we do.
 
I've always felt that what we do is more important than what we believe, and for the most part this has not changed. However, as a Mom of two preschoolers, any concept I may have ever had about "earning my salvation" by being virtuous has flown out the window. At the end of each day I am just amazed at how no matter what resolve I have in the morning of being 100% patient and attentive and kind and honest and self-sacrificing and so on, I always fail to live up to those standards, I make many more mistakes than I want to, and I don't seem to improve a whole lot over time. The harder I try to be the perfect mom, the more miserably I fail. So let me tell you what has helped.

I starting thinking about how if God were judging me the way I was judging myself, and judging my children, and my husband, based on how virtuous we all are (or how we all are not), I would indeed be in hell. [for the record, I think of hell as distance from God, rather than a physical place]. But, when I think instead about how God loves me in spite of how imperfect I am, and how God loves me every day as I fail to be virtuous, it suddenly becomes so much easier to be patient and attentive and kind and honest. Let me emphasize that I still need to keep trying, it is not effortless, but the change in perspective to putting faith before works has made all the difference.

I say no one is more surprised than me that I am writing these words. Less than six years ago I was a skeptic and an agnostic, if not outright atheist. OK, I'm still a skeptic about lots of things, but one who first decided to decide, and then decided to believe (Pascal's wager). Someone said to me just today that doubt and faith are two sides of one coin, and I do carry that coin in my pocket. But, the proof is in the pudding. My life is much much richer than it was as an agnostic.

So, today my work is being a mom, and with two preschoolers that doesn't leave me with a lot of time for other works. But, I think that this same approach, feeling my faith first, helps me do more and better good acts. Whether the works are of any higher value I am content to let God decide.

lunamoth

In the dark, but attracted to the light.
 
Namaste all,


interesting thread thus far...

another consideration vis a vie the works vs. faith issue is this... is it the exoteric or esoteric aspect of the "work" that is what is important?

allow me to explain my query a bit...

let's pick an example of a work, good or not. let's pick, for our example, the action of charity.

Charity as a work, can take many forms. donations of time, energy, money and so forth characterize the exoteric aspects of the work, i.e. it is easily discernable if someone is volunteering their time in a soup kitchen. whereas the motivation or intention behind the charitable act is it's esoteric aspect.

for instance, if the person is donating their time to work in a soup kitchen (exoteric) with the intention of robbing the facility after hours (esoteric) are they doing good works?

from my point of view, i'd say "no". despite the exoteric aspect of the work, in our tradition, it is the intention behind the action that is the determiniant factor between a "good" work and a "bad" work. i put those words in " " because we don't really have uses for those things in our tradition. typically, "good works" are called Skillful and "bad works" are Unskillful, the Buddha rarely uses the words "good" and "bad" in a moral sense.
 
Determining the spirit of the motivation behind a deed that helps others? A sticky wicket indeed! :)

lunamoth

In the dark, but attracted to the light.
 
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