THE HEART OF FAITH

It is the affects which motivate. That fact goes down hard in Western culture. And the religious institutions, at least the intellectually sensitive ones, may be just as befuddled by that now quite unavoidable fact as is the rest of the culture. And that is odd, quite odd, especially for Christianity and Judaism for their principle guide book, the Bible, is veritably littered with affirmations of that very fact. Texts by the score parade, “out of the heart are the issues of life”. But these texts like all the rest are read through the lens of the culture's centuries old mistaken presupposition that people behave on the basis of how they have been taught to think.

So the tests for faith,  the catechisms, the Torah, the Koran, the creeds even, these become the bench marks determining what one is to believe, and therefore who are the true believers.  The Christian pastor solemnly asks the confirmand,  “Who is your Lord and Savior?”  And if the answer is given, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior,” it is assumed that the deed is done. This mouthed affirmation is hailed as the turning point, the guarantee that the instructions have been sufficient and this new Christian now embraces Jesus as her/his guide for living.  When were you saved? The question is asked. And the proper answer, “When I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior.”

But we must query, “How do they believe whatever they claim to believe?” The heart, the affects, must give the under-girding or it is a sham. The head must be there. Yes! The thinking, the propositions, the theology, the creeds, but they come after the fact, and are secondary. In the Christian religious setting the affection for Jesus, a desire for a relationship with God,  these are part of the “How”. and the creeds, the statements of faith, these don't amount to a fig if the affects are not truly engaged by the claimed object of devotion.

How does that happen, the engagement of the affects in such wise that an object of intellectual interest    is a subject related to with devotion? The affects with which every normal human being is endowed at birth (surprise, interest, enjoyment, distress, anger, fear, disgust, dissmell, shame) are the keys to a faithful life, or not.  The way these have been scripted to respond to the world will reveal the scope of influence one's claimed religion has over one's life.  Here is the test. If it is a Christian setting the questions become, does what made Jesus angry make you angry? Are you distressed about the same things Jesus was?  Do you sometimes feel shame when you think of Jesus?  How come?  Would Jesus approve of all of the things that make you really happy? How does thinking about Jesus make you feel? The answers to these and similar questions tell whether and how Jesus is really one's Lord and Savior.

Much of  the how of faith is a mystery, but not all of it. No one can possibly be in charge of another person's relationship to the Holy. However, one may be a catalyst for some other's encounter with God. Often, if not usually, it happens by accident, or by providence, if you prefer. It is comprehended retrospectively, cannot be forced, and often, most often, it is at least highly surprising and to the most fortunate it is overwhelming and life altering. There is no time table, no progression, no system, no technique which guarantees entrance to the holy of hollies. It is an event, not a programmed conclusion. The sacred is not ours to bid come, only to hope for. But hope, real hope, not just simple wishing, hope, hope for an encounter with the holy has a context, and that context is worship.

Indeed, God may come out of the blue, as it were, on an August starry night when the shower of Perseid meteors staggers one into grateful amazement for the wonder of creation, and feels addressed somehow, personally addressed, requiring a response one does not know how to make.  Thanksgiving is a great part of it, but insufficient. And the neighbor standing nearby says, “Hey, see that?, I saw three at once. Good show.”  And the one addressed  is saddened by the neighbor's uncomprehending prosaic remark. Anywhere, any time, it can happen that the world is seen to be aflame with the glory of God, but seldom is it so even for the fortunate and for many, for most in our God forsaken time, it does not happen at all. The culture is mortally ill from the declared absence of the holy, or of God's very death. Thinking one's way to God is a fool's errand. As philosopher Hartley Alexander put it once. “God is not the conclusion to a syllogism, but the illumination of a vision.”

What sort of vision is this of which Alexander's metaphor speaks? What light illuminates the world from that angle of vision?.  At what metaphoric frequencies do those colors vibrate as one's world is perceived? The answer  is in how and in what ways the affects have been cathected.  Is anything worthy, and how come? Is anything out there WORTH  attention, care, possibly  devotion? Life, even? Worth is the claim of value. What out there in the world should receive worth-ship.  Etymologically that is the origin of the word worship from Old English.

Functionally worship has its origin in the exercises of the affect system as it assigns valence to various elements of our experience. And it does so incessantly. That is the evolved purpose of the system, to decide “the value of an experience,” according to James LeDoux. Or as Richard Cytowic puts it, “It is an emotional evaluation, not a reasoned one, that ultimately informs our behavior.”

The whole field of ethics is rooted there, in the affective habituation characteristic of the scripting of personality. Aesthetics, too, evaluating what is lovely, beautiful, or ugly, these are signaled as well from one's affective set. So, that aspect of personality called character develops as a concomitant to script formation. Anyone who “intends” anything is assigning worth-ship to it,deeming it worth one's time and energy, one's life, that is. It happens in everyone much of the time, deciding what and how to do whatever.

The religious institutions are quite forthright about this matter. They go about worth-ship honestly, openly, intentionally. Other institutions are doing the same thing, mostly unwittingly. I doubt that my third grade teacher knew anything about my affect system (that was many decades ago) but she was involved in offering me “an effective selection of the world” as Martin Buber characterized education. The advertising industry, however, knows full well that its very purpose is to guide people's worth-ship, but hopes to do so subtly so we don't catch on.

The affects are the primary motivators.  The religious institutions face that squarely, intentionally and honestly in claiming that the central thing they provide for is worship. But for the most part they do not really know what they are doing.  They “know” very little about affect, how the affect system is composed and how it works. They are in the business of furnishing a setting in which people's affects are scripted to respond to experience mirroring the scripts of that particular religious body. If it is a Christian church then Jesus is presented as the figure whose life reveals the most dependable and appropriate way to go about one's own life. The Bible is affectionately embraced as the guide book to Jesus and his way and therefore the way of true life for the members. The worship service is the place and time when all of one's sensory inputs and behaviors are correlated with the actions and symbols which image the sacred. It is a personal event in which the worshiper is privately addressed. It is a communal event as well, enhancing affective resonance and  magnifying the religious script.

The stained glass windows, organ music, candles, singing together, affectionate greetings, Bible reading, the Eucharistic meal, talk about God, and talk about proper human life accompanied by assurance of belonging, these all aim at engagement of the affects in a script for living a life dependent upon and reflecting the life of Jesus. If it is a Synagogue or Mosque the names, symbols, texts, actions are different but the goal is the same, the engagement of the affects in such a way that the life style embraced by the particular religion will be become the life defining script of the worshipers.

It happens all the time in public worship, but in a sense, almost by accident. Worship leaders need to know as much as possible about the human affect system and its engagement by symbols and rituals so worship may be as effective as possible.  “Out of the heart are the issues of life.”  The Bible has always said so. Though this is a major affront to most of Western Culture's intellectual  tradition the heart really does come first. In spite of ourselves theological education is largely in step with that tradition which mistakenly believes human beings behave on the basis of what they have been taught to think.   Silvan S. Tomkins put it squarely in saying, “The affects are the primary motivators.”  Now the brain scientists are following suit, beginning to point out where and how in the brain those conviction forming processes take place. A biological theology is in the making.

The creeds so often take precedence over caring. Even Luther cringed at the letter of James. The issue here is not works righteousness vis a vis faith. The issue is the how of faith. Is the quintessential act of  believing the recitation of a statement? Hardly! It is only faithful if the statement is understood to be a somewhat impoverished way of publicly laying claim to the love of God. The function of the worship service is to so offer the contents of the Faith that they engage the affect system of the worshipers, deepening their experience of  the Holy. Speaking is a part of it, but useless, unless the Word becomes incarnate, fleshed out by the mutual embrace between worshipers and their God.

The role that our scripted affects plays in spiritual experience can be discovered as simply as listening to our prayers. Isn't it often the case that our prayers follow Tomkins Blueprint.  We pray for increased positive affect and decreased negative affect.  And isn't prayer sometiems the place where affect finds its most unedited expression.

Looking at the history of religious belief it is hard to deny that faith has often if not always played a powerful role in the modification or modulation of emotion for individuals and communities.   Sacrifices made to volcanoes certainly played a role in relieving fear of the volcano god.  This may not seem like a big deal, but changing the way we manage certain feelings may be the most dramatic shifts that can happen for humans.

Let's explore it all together!

Charles Gaby