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    The Book of Practical Faith: A Path to Useful Spirituality
    The Book of Practical Faith: A Path to Useful Spirituality
    The Book of Practical Faith: A Path to Useful Spirituality
    Ebook78 pages2 hours

    The Book of Practical Faith: A Path to Useful Spirituality

    By D. Patrick Miller

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    About this ebook

    More than ever before, many of us are struggling to cope with the trials and tribulations of modern life. In this concise and eloquent volume, D. Patrick Miller inspires us to meet these challenges with a practical faith, which he describes as "the way out of misery, the way into self-knowledge, and the way toward a more fulfilling and effective life."

    Miller outlines a path to a "useful spirituality" that can be floowed by anyone with or without traditional religious beliefs. In four lucid steps--Releasing Guilt, Gathering Trust, Practicing Patience, and Learning Transcendence--Miller shows how to develop a practical faith in the midst of everyday life. A journalist by trade who has rediscovered the value of faith after a health and spiritual crisis, he condenses years of personal and professional study into an exceptional synthesis of contemporary wisdom.

    In today's tumultuous world, The Book of Practical Faith offers all of us an invaluable gift: a sensible path toward an everyday experience of faith that is at once pragmatic and profound.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 23, 2014
    ISBN9781466881969
    The Book of Practical Faith: A Path to Useful Spirituality
    Author

    D. Patrick Miller

    Patrick D. Miller is Charles T. Haley Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. He is the author of numerous books, including The Religion of Ancient Israel. He is coeditor of the Interpretation commentary series and the Westminster Bible Companion series. In 1998, he served as President of the Society of Biblical Literature. He was also editor of Theology Today for twenty years.

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      Book preview

      The Book of Practical Faith - D. Patrick Miller

      The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

      Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright Notice

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Introduction

      Four Steps to a Practical Faith

      I. Releasing Guilt

      II. Gathering Trust

      III. Practicing Patience

      IV. Learning Transcendence

      The Rewards of a Practical Faith

      Acknowledgments

      Also by D. Patrick Miller

      About the Author

      Copyright

      For my father, who taught me steadfastness

      Too many people jump into spirituality as a shelter to hide from reality. It doesn’t work that way. The way it works is for the spirit behind you to follow you wherever you go, and show you how to face up to adversity.

      ∼Malidoma Somé, Ph.D., African shaman and scholar, in an interview with the author

      Introduction

      Faith is a more practical way to deal with everyday life than cynicism, toughness, or defensiveness. Faith can be sensible and savvy, and practicing it daily increases its usefulness and reliability. Yet faith is also tinged with mystery, for it is the connection to our unknown potential and the power of creation itself. Faith is the way out of misery, the way into self-knowledge, and the way toward a more fulfilling and effective life.

      Most people might define faith as a belief in God. This book is about faith as striving to maintain a constant contact with God. By God I mean the universal and marvelously creative energy that moves us all, an energy that increasingly enables us to be peaceful, compassionate, and wise. Of course, belief and faith in God can coincide, and they can strengthen each other. But I believe it is also possible to practice faith—to honor, share, and benefit from divine energy—without any particular religious belief or affiliation. This is my personal experience.

      On the other hand, it is easy to see the damage done in the world by people promoting religious beliefs that are not backed up by the practice of a wise and tolerant faith. Thus, practicing faith is not the same as holding fast to a religious belief against all of the slings and arrows of reality. In fact, faith is weakened by too much believing. Faith is the willingness to take a chance on what we do not yet believe, for the sake of finding greater happiness and spreading and sharing peace.

      I’m convinced that what most people long for is the constant experience of faith in their lives. Obviously, few people identify their longings that way; they are more likely to say they seek intimacy, excitement, comfort, wealth, status, or power. But these objectives are longed for because it seems that they would supply what is missing in people’s lives. In general terms, what people miss is a sense of stability, security, and fulfillment in everyday living.

      The great secret of a practical faith is that it can supply the core of what we long for, even if we never achieve the particulars. Faith does not replace longing, but it does refocus longing on inner qualities that can be strengthened through contemplation and practice regardless of one’s outer circumstances. By supplying the essence of what we deeply seek, faith also reduces our fear, self-absorption, and competitiveness, thus bringing about a greater harmony between people.

      The miracle of a well-practiced faith is that it eventually provides rewards that surpass the mere fulfillment of our desires. That is my conclusion after relatively few years of investigating faith as a personal practice. I have written this book to pass on the good news of my experience: that the essence of whatever we long for in life can be attained through practicing faith, and that such a practice can be undertaken at any time by anyone with a little willingness to attempt it. Because faith may still be perceived as a vague religious ideal by many—or as something that, like blue eyes, you’re either born with or you aren’t—I’ve tried to offer pragmatic steps toward the adoption of faith as a spiritual discipline that can be pursued without any particular religious conviction.

      *   *   *

      It may seem odd for a journalist to write an inspirational book about faith. At moments it has seemed very odd to me. When I was a young reporter, I valued rationality and skepticism above all else and thought of faith as an attitude of gullibility held chiefly by churchgoers. To me, all faith looked blind—a deliberate refusal to face cold, hard reality in order to hold on to useless religious ideas and superstitions.

      Yet beneath this judgmental attitude—which I mistook for sophistication—I never entirely lost the sensation of something nameless abiding within me. When I was a boy I would feel this presence strongly while standing beside my father just inside the garage, the two of us leaning against the trunk of the big family car, wordlessly watching a curtain of soft rain fall just inches in front of us. If it had been raining for a while, we could see the small creek down the hill start rising, mud brown, to the top of its banks.

      Like a lot of nuclear families in the fifties and sixties, we had some troubles that made life jumpy and

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