Faith In Action

I don’t see faith as much use if it is an assent to a series of doctrinal statements.  I see people recite their creed but then see no action that builds community among those believers.  If I see people who have a “faith” community as they call it, this did not come from their doctrinal faith, but rather from some activity usually associated with children or some common event of interest in which they met one another.  Send your child to a Catholic elementary school and you meet other parents.  Put you child in a sports program and you meet other parents, and these adults may become your friends.  But it did not come with doctrine.  I think that a faith which leads to community building directly is from a response to a God experience.  God acts in such a way that energizes you to build community.  You might have the sense of the sacredness of each human person, the homeless as well, and you go and work in a food program that brings the hungry, the homeless, the lonely together to meet one another on a regular basis.  When senior citizens move to a new place, they don’t have the child school attachments to bond them to others.  It can be lonely unless they find a way to meet people with a common interest.  Going to a church of their faith generally does not do it.  Faith builds community not walls.