Have a Little Faith

Riding into Atlanta much later than planned after a long haul from the Gulf Coast, Toni and I rumbled down alien freeway interchanges in the dark of midnight, which is not the hour when an unfamiliar city feels eager to explain itself.

Atlanta at noon may be hospitable, leafy, cultured, and proud. Atlanta at midnight, viewed from a motorcycle after too many hours in the saddle, appeared to have been designed by over-caffeinated engineers trying to solve a traffic problem using ramen noodles, concrete, and unresolved personal issues.

I needed to verify our lodging and plug earbuds into my navigation app before the road system successfully digested us. So we took an exit and pulled off into the nearest driveway.

It turned out to be the gated entrance of a condo complex that looked wealthier than the surrounding neighborhood and, perhaps understandably, wary of two road-grimed strangers on loaded Harleys idling near the gate in the middle of the night.

As I fumbled through my pockets, a burly security guard came toward us with the purposeful stride of a man who had been waiting for the night to give him something to do. He advanced behind a massive flashlight, less holding it than deploying it, and demanded that we clear the drive.

Fair enough. From his perspective, we were not yet researchers of love. We were black leather, engine noise, road dirt, exhaustion, and several unanswered questions with saddlebags.

Toni, however, has the most disarming smile I have ever seen. I have watched it soften hotel clerks, suspicious waitresses, angry tollbooth attendants, children, bikers, dogs, and me, repeatedly, across more than forty years. Once under its influence, the guard paused long enough for us to explain why we were there: not to invade his bailiwick, but to find our beds after another long, strange day on our Journeys to Love across America. His name was George.

And George quickly warmed to us. He asked about the bikes, our journey, where we had been, where we were going, and where we planned to stay. He gave us safe directions back to the freeway and even suggested a place for breakfast. In a few minutes, he had become our first friend in Atlanta: standing in the middle of a driveway, in the middle of the night, in the middle of our story.

We parted with hugs and handshakes, George with a Journeys to Love patch in hand, and us with our first Atlanta man-in-the-street interview.

All of it happened by chance, yes. But not only by chance. It also happened because, for one small moment, each of us was willing to lower our shields, listen, and have a little faith in one another.

That rapid evolution from doubt to friendship is one Toni and I have experienced from Taos Pueblo to the streets of East Detroit, from Haight-Ashbury to Amish settlements in Pennsylvania. The fractures between people and cultures are real. We feel them. We see them. Our media, politics, algorithms, and various entrepreneurial fear merchants exploit them with all the subtlety of raccoons in a campground cooler. And yet, again and again, the road has shown us something just as true:

Folks is folks.

Nearly everyone simply wants some version of the same things: peace, safety, health, family, purpose, a few laughs, enough money to keep the wolves at bay, a lot of love, and a little faith that somehow, despite the evidence currently scrolling across the screens, everything might still be okay. People long for reasons to have faith in one another.

Defense advocate LaTonia Jones said this beautifully over a bowl of gumbo in a Lexington, Kentucky, jazz café. “People feel like they can’t talk about love and faith with each other,” she told us, “because, ‘Hey, I got bills to pay,’ or ‘you’re one of those people,’ or ‘I just got profiled by the police.’ They forget that while all that stuff is happening, there’s something else happening, too. Love is available. It’s just as available to us as all that other stuff. We can choose that instead - that faith in the potential for something better between all of us.”

Enjoying LaTonia’s company and the gumbo she had wisely recommended, I realized how profound it was that she had described that choice as faith rather than belief. She did not say people could choose to believe in one another. She made it a matter of faith, and that distinction matters.

We often use belief and faith as though they are synonyms, especially in religious conversation, but they are very different in kind, origin, and effect.

Belief is a product of the mind. It is a conclusion drawn from thought, evidence, experience, argument, authority, and often the reassuring presence of other believers nodding nearby. Belief can be strong, intelligent, and necessary. Belief builds bridges, conducts trials, tests medicines, evaluates maps, and keeps us from assuming every roadside diner with a hand-painted “Best Burger in America” sign has been independently verified.

But belief also carries doubt inside it. That is not a flaw. Doubt is one of the mind’s healthiest talents. Science depends on it. Democracy depends on it. Marriage sometimes depends on it (especially when one partner says, “I’m sure this shortcut will save time.”)

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, in his book Faith and Belief, illustrates the point through a simple example. To say, “John knows Paris is the capital of France,” suggests certainty. To say, “John believes Paris is the capital of France,” introduces uncertainty. To say, “John believes Marseilles is the capital of France,” may mean John is uncertain, or it may mean the speaker knows John is wrong and is being polite about it.

Belief, then, often leaves room for correction. Faith is different. Faith is not merely a conclusion of the mind but a response of the heart and spirit. It is not blind, despite what the cliché suggests. Faith sees differently. It does not require the same kind of proof because it arises from relationship, trust, engagement, hope, and a serene conviction that something or someone is true enough to risk ourselves toward.

Saint Thomas Aquinas put it memorably: “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

That line can sound dismissive if mishandled, but at its best, it names something real. It would never occur to a person in whose love we have faith to ask for laboratory proof that the love exists. We may need consistency, honesty, apology, changed behavior, and repair when that love is harmed. But love itself is not verified like a passport. Neither is faith.

Faith simply is. And in that regard, faith is like love - often misunderstood when we confuse it with its systems and institutions.

Religion based on love and faith can be a powerful force for good. It can maintain cultural traditions, bond communities, provide moral formation, and give people language for awe, grief, hope, humility, and service. But faith and religion are not the same thing.

Faith is internal: trust, surrender, confidence, orientation, and a way of being.

Religion is external: saga, ritual, doctrine, community, worship, philosophy, and codes of behavior.

At their best, they nourish one another. Religion gives faith a house, a table, songs, stories, candles, bread, silence, and people who will bring casseroles when the roof falls in. Faith gives religion its living soul. But religion without faith is just politics in church clothes.

Faith needs no face, no liturgy, no form, no individual personality, and no defense. It requires no explanation to exist. It may be expressed through religion, but it is not contained by it. Faith is the soul’s willingness to trust what love knows before the mind has finished cross-examining the witness.

And because the mind does love a cross-examination, a small clarification may be useful here. Upon reading that the heart and spirit do not doubt but hope, part of you may object, “Oh, I’m quite sure my heart has doubts.” I get it; mine, too. But notice where that objection appeared. It arrived as a thought. The mind does a great deal of thinking about what the heart and spirit are, or should be, doing. Sometimes the mind even doubts what it thinks about what it thought it was thinking. (Unbelievable, right?) Meanwhile, the heart and spirit just go on about their business.

When someone has faith in us, whether a parent, partner, child, friend, teacher, colleague, teammate, sponsor, or the rare security guard willing to hear us out at midnight, something essential deep within us wakes. Their faith does not become ours as if handed across a counter. Rather, it calls to the faith already within us. We seek to affirm it, live up to it, and become worthy of what they have seen.

Being “in faith,” if I may risk a phrase, works much like being “in love.” We do not get faith from others. We discover it because of them.

When we sense its presence, it is water for the parched soul. It nurtures our own faith in those who pour it. Unexpectedly, it is not finally their faith toward us that gives us courage. It is the faith they inspire within us that helps us overcome doubt and risk ourselves in new directions. This is not merely sentimental. It has paws.

In his book Dog Is Love, Dr. Clive Wynne describes research into what psychologists call the “secure base effect.” In studies with human infants and toddlers, a parent or primary caregiver serves as a secure base from which a child feels safe enough to explore the world. The child ventures out because someone trusted is nearby: someone who will protect, comfort, welcome, and remain.

One of Wynne’s research assistants, Erica Feuerbacher, studied a similar pattern in dogs. Dogs were brought into a room with both their owner and a stranger present. Researchers measured how much time the dogs spent with each. With their owner's familiar presence at hand (or paw, as the case may be), the dogs quickly and confidently ventured to meet the new person, often spending most of their time with the stranger.

Other studies suggest dogs are more willing to explore unfamiliar environments and learn new behaviors, not because their owners are directing every move, but because the trusted presence itself gives them courage.

Anyone who has ever watched a dog check back over its shoulder before approaching something suspicious - a stranger, a vacuum cleaner, a Halloween decoration, a cat with a lawyer - understands this immediately. The dog does not need the beloved person to remove all risk. The dog needs to know the beloved person is there.

So do we.

We use ordinary phrases for this loving proximity all the time without examining the depth inside them. “She’s by my side.” “He’s got my back.” “They’re always there for me.”

“There” turns out to be a sacred word. It is the place we’re left standing in triumph when a risk succeeds. It is also the place we’re left kneeling when we fail. Knowing that someone in whom we have faith will be sharing that space either way gives us the courage to go there.

This is what George became for us in Atlanta, briefly and unexpectedly. This is what Toni’s smile invited. This is what LaTonia named over gumbo. This is what dogs understand before philosophers get their shoes tied. Faith is the secure base from which love explores. And here is where the circle widens.

Nearly everyone is standing by someone. Nearly everyone has someone’s back. Nearly everyone is there for somebody, or longs to be. This means we are not scattered as randomly as loneliness tells us. We are standing in a deep circle. There may be gaps in that circle at times, painful ones. Some people fall through. Some people are pushed. Some learn too early not to trust hands reaching toward them.

But the gaps are not always as wide as fear insists. Often, they are no farther than one person can reach in faith.

That does not mean faith is easy. It is far easier to believe people are dangerous, foolish, selfish, unreachable, or “one of those people,” especially when there is evidence available, and there is always evidence available. Human beings are generous with reasons to doubt one another. We are also magnificent suppliers of reasons to hope. The question is which evidence we choose to organize our lives around.

Faith does not deny risk. George had reason to be cautious with us. We had reason to be cautious with him. LaTonia did not pretend that bills, profiling, prejudice, or social fracture vanish because love is available. Dogs do not explore because the world is free of threats. Children do not venture away from a parent because nothing bad can happen.

Faith does not say, “Nothing can hurt me.” Faith says, “Even so, I can move toward others and live.”

Like love, faith is not an act or emotion, though it inspires both. It is a way of being, and one we can choose to practice. Also like love, we often get the direction backward. We seek others who will have faith in us, which we cannot control, instead of seeking people in whom we can place our faith, which we can choose. That choice changes us.

When I have faith in Toni, I become braver.

When I have faith in a stranger, I become more open.

When I have faith in my students, I become more patient.

When I have faith in people whose lives, politics, worship, language, losses, or loves differ from mine, I become less trapped inside the small, suspicious borders of myself.

Faith does not require me to agree with everyone. It does not require me to ignore harm, abandon discernment, or leave the door unlocked for every passing scoundrel with a clipboard and a laminated badge. Reason remains useful. Boundaries remain holy. Trust may need to be earned in particular relationships.

But faith, deeper than trust in any single outcome, is the decision to live as though connection is always possible. That is what happened in the Atlanta driveway. A guard saw strangers and chose not to stop at suspicion. Two riders saw authority and chose not to stop at defensiveness.

Toni smiled. I explained. George listened.

We all took one step across the gap, and Atlanta changed. Not the whole city, of course. The interchanges remained an eldritch knot of civic ambition and poor signage. But our Atlanta changed because the first person we met there became a friend.

That is how faith works most of the time. Not as thunder. Not as certainty descending from the heavens. Not as angels arranging traffic cones into a helpful arrow, though I remain welcoming to that potential miracle. Faith usually arrives as a small chosen movement toward another person before proof has finished its paperwork.

A smile. A question.A bowl of gumbo. A hand on the back. A dog looking over its shoulder and deciding the world is worth sniffing after all. A security guard at midnight, saying, in effect, “All right. Tell me your story.”

We all generally want the same things: peace, safety, health, family, a few laughs, a lot of love, and some reason to believe the circle can hold. Maybe faith is how we give one another that reason. Maybe it is how we become secure bases for one another in a frightening world. And maybe, the distance between us does not always demand a leap.

Sometimes it only asks for one step, taken with open hands, toward the person standing in the middle of the driveway, in the middle of the night, in the middle of our story.

Have a little faith. Then see who we can become, together.

Scotte Burns is a writer, speaker, and co-founder, with his wife Toni, of Journeys to Love, a multimedia quest to explore love’s origin, nature, and purpose through more than 100,000 miles of motorcycle travel across America.