“Tolstoy did not give precise definitions to the faith he found… But I suspect it was something like this. The meaning of life is the realization that you are held in the arms of a vast presence; that you are not abandoned; that you are here because you were meant to be. It is the sense that life is something you have been given, so that you live with a feeling of gratitude and you seek to give back, to “pay it forward”, to be a blessing to others. This presence in which you live knows you better than you know yourself, so it is no use pretending to be what you are not, or denying your shortcomings, or justifying your mistakes, or engaging in self pity, or blaming others. It is a loving, forgiving but challenging presence, demanding much but never more than you can do…. This is not a testable proposition. There is no scientific experiment that would establish it to be true or false. ”

This passage moves beyond the earlier definition, and includes two other aspects. First, that faith (perhaps only religious faith) cannot be demonstrated. Now, at some level, this demonstrates what we will say below, that faith even by Sacks’ definition includes a cognitive element. More importantly, it suggests – perhaps like other commitments such as marriage or the like – that there is an element of insecurity in commitments we make and faithfulness we commit to in advance of acting upon that. This is kind of paradoxical. I can only succeed in complicated, long-term commitments if I accept to keep working through failure. A real sports fan sticks with the team when it is losing. Second, Sacks says quite a bit about what it “feels like” to experience faith: “held in the arms, obligations, pay it forward, etc.” Particularly important is the combination of not pretending to be what you are not, not blaming others, taking responsibility for my own successes and failures. We can ask students to spell out what these different things are and how they relate to the notion of “faith” by Sacks definition. We can also ask them to think about how they experience such things in their own lives.

1. What are times that you've failed at or struggled with something? How did that experience help you grow?