Faith is conscious knowledge

Abdu’l-Baha said:

"By faith is meant, first, conscious knowledge, and second, the practice of good deeds."

The knowledge in the above quote has puzzled me for a while, I am not sure what knowledge is considered the "knowledge" in the quote, and why Abdu’l-Baha said "conscious knowledge", not simply knowledge in general.

Recently I listened to an audio tape of Dr.William Hatcher which shed some light on my understanding of the above question and I’d like to share with you here.

We talked about visible and invisible realities in a previous note. We have seen that gravity is a convincing argument for invisible reality, because what can be more common place than gravity. Surely people would have realized by now that gravity whose effects are observed by everyone is an immediate proof of invisible reality. So why don’t we observe this then? Because we take it for granted. In other word, gravity is so common place, we depend on it so unconsciously, we assume it so thoroughly that we are unaware of its implication. We are unaware that it is an immediate experience of invisible reality.

It is the same thing with God. God is hidden from us, not by His remoteness, but by His very nearness. What hide God from us is that we depend on Him so thoroughly that we take it for granted. Whatever the degree of stability or permanence we have in our life is due, not to the inherent properties of these things, but to God. There is example given by Abdu’l-Baha in this regard.

Someone once asked Abdu’l-Baha: how it is that one can become immersed in God. Abdu’l-Baha asked how can a straw basket contain water. The person said: no, the straw basket cannot contain water, you put water in straw basket, water just goes through. Abdu'l-Baha answered that suppose you immerse the straw basket in the ocean, then it is full of water.

So we can’t contain God, but we can be contained in God. In fact, we are immersed in ocean, and because we are constantly immersed in ocean, we don’t know what it will like not immersed in ocean. Therefore we succumb to the illusion that we are not immersed in the ocean. So acquiring faith means acquiring the knowledge of our dependency on God. Thus faith is conscious awareness of our dependency on God. The dependency is objective fact. Nothing changes in reality when we become a believer. The only thing that changes is our consciousness of reality. Our awareness of the dependency that is already there.

So to have faith in God doesn’t mean to become dependent on God. This is again a pure materialistic view of faith. This is why materialists often say that believers are weak people. They said you need a crutch of believing God. It’s a defense mechanism against reality. Or it’s opium. Of cause, some form of religions are crutch, some form of religions are defense mechanism against reality. But true religion, true belief in God means becoming aware of a reality that is already there, that reality is our total dependency on God.

Just as Baha'u'llah said:

“There can be no doubt whatever that if for one moment the tide of His mercy and grace were to be withheld from the world, it would completely perish.”