Faithing
By Peter Pearson

Faith is an odd sort of virtue. In these days of televangelism, tracts, and the "Christian right," one would be tempted to identify faith with a set of beliefs, a conglomerate of successive religious propositions that one has accepted; a branch of one’s "mental furniture," so to speak. However, to limit one’s definition of faith to this narrow band is to do faith itself a disservice. In the history of literature and philosophy alike, there are those who have conceived of faith rather differently. Among these are Myles Connolly and Sø ren Kierkegaard in their respective works Mr. Blue and Judge for Yourself! What these men seek to effect is not so much a redefinition of faith as a refinement and expansion it. Principles, yes, they say; but furthermore, actions flowing out of those principles. This type of faith is thus characterized not only by beliefs, but also the natural actions that come from those beliefs. In this way, faith becomes something that envelopes a person’s whole being; it is transmuted into a complete orientation for one’s life.
This type of faith, extolled by Kierkegaard, is embodied in the character of J. Blue in Myles Connolly’s book Mr. Blue. Blue was a rather singular person to say the least. At the very beginning of the book, the narrator says the following of Blue:
I have not the slightest doubt he would have been … immensely happy in a poorhouse. He had no money. When by accident he happened upon some he gave it away. He worked here and there for his meals and a place to sleep. He roamed eastern United States and really did get abroad. The while he lived gloriously, and, withal, religiously. He impressed one as a sort of gay, young, and gallant monk without an Order. Or perhaps his Order was life, and the world his monastery. (15)

Such a person was Blue. He had little interest in possessions, he was much more entranced by a bright splash of color, a marching band, or a sunset viewed off the top of a skyscraper. But above all, his profession, if he could be said to have one, was people. Blue was in love with people, his eyes sparkled for them, his mind was on fire for them, his heart bled for them. Blue’s idea of the ultimate life project was to establish what he called the "Spies of God," an unorganized group of people that simply went around loving other people, people in need, poor people. This vision was so palpable for Blue, so real, so very present at every moment, that he could not help expressing it in his everyday life.
What makes a man this way? People had their theories about Blue; some said he was crazy, while others thought his shiftless way of life had left him a bit eccentric. And yet, none of these ideas come near touching the wellspring of Blue’s being. It was not insanity that drove him, but rather his faith (although some would equate the two). However, to say that Blue’s faith was purely intellectual would indeed be insanity itself; Blue was possessed not only of an ideology, but of an ideology in action. Kierkegaard believed that this kind of faith, this life-orienting faith, was the only true kind. In Judge for Yourself, Kierkegaard continually draws the line between the mentality of the world and that of true Christianity. With regard to knowledge, Kierkegaard writes of the secular mindset:
… We set a high price on knowledge, and everyone strives to develop his knowing more and more. "But," says the sensible person, "one must be careful the direction one’s knowing takes. If my knowing turns inward, against me, if I do not take care to prevent this, then knowing is the most intoxicating thing there is, the way to becoming completely intoxicated, since there then occurs an intoxicating confusion between the knowledge and the knower, so that the knower will himself resemble, will be, that which is known. And this is intoxication … . Christianity, however,
declares that it is precisely the turning of one’s knowing inward toward oneself that makes one sober. (118-119)

Blue is the embodiment of “knowledge turned inward,” of faith encompassing action. Blue’s actions ultimately were not separate from his faith; they were inextricably intertwined. When Blue ran into the street to save his friend Joe from being hit by a limousine, he wasn’t pointing to his intellectual faith, he was living a transcendent faith. In a way, one might even say he was “faithing.” Blue faithed his way through his life, until they so resembled one another, as Kierkegaard describes, that they were virtually indistinguishable. Was Blue’s faith his life, was his life his faith? The simple answer is: both.
Blue’s extraordinary faith led to a number of things for him. One thing which faith gave to Blue was a kind of Christian detachment. Blue owned very little in the way of material possessions, but this was not because of a conscious shunning on his part. Rather, Blue was simply not interested in financial prudence and acquiring; they had no appeal for him, no power over him. Kierkegaard identifies this kind of detachment from worldly cares as “relinquishing probability” and “venturing in reliance upon God.” “Here is the infinite difference from the essentially Christian, since Christianly, indeed, even just religiously, the person who never relinquished probability never became involved with God. All religious, to say nothing of Christian, venturing is on the other side of probability, is by way of relinquishing probability” (99-100). Blue indeed cared very little for the probable, for the prudent. The narrator, with a bit more of an eye towards the future, once suggested to Blue that he take more thought for his own future. Nothing was further from Blue’s mind.
I had dropped him a note advising him to be more thrifty and urging him to take more thought for the future. He writes back:
“And even you preach caution to me! How I detest that word! How it has written its evil over our lives. Why, a man can’t be spontaneously affectionate today without being suspected of weakness! We are advised to watch ourselves .... Silence, caution, reserve, are urged as prime virtues. Our fear of exuberance, of ecstasy, of any genuine passion, is being stamped on our faces and our lives .... Once, I am told, men put on their shields and banners such brave words as Love, Audacity, Faith. Today we have written across a million pages and placards and billboards our slogans: Self-considerateness, Thrift, Safety first. We have about as much hunger for loveliness as a turtle. And about as much capacity for intense and varied living as a cabbage.” (73-4)

A person such as Blue has little time for considering such things as these. Blue himself wore a jacket and pants of sorts that he had made himself. He never really had a permanent dwelling, and whenever the need for money came up, he never worried too much about it, but instead trusted himself, as he always did, to the foundation of his very essence: God. Once, Blue had been staying with a certain woman named Mrs. Murphy. As Blue was late with his rent, Mrs. Murphy requested payment, although she obviously saw that Blue probably didn’t have 20 cents in the world. And yet, the next day, Blue paid the double the rent and was off again, casting himself into the arms of the world and people whom he loved so well. Mrs. Murphy never knew where Blue went or how he paid the rent, but she did discover one thing Blue left behind, which was a typed letter to “My good dear Mother.” Had she been better acquainted with Blue, she would have known that this was a letter from him to God. Also, notes the narrator, “Mrs. Murphy, had she a little more imagination, could have discovered in the letter who it was who paid Blue’s rent” (86).
One of the curious aspects of faith is that, while a virtue in its own right, faith also tends to give birth to other virtues as well, much like a fertile bed of soil nourishes a spectrum of exotic plants and flowers. Blue’s faith bled over into all areas of his life and inspired him to be a number of other things as well: loving, courageous, honest, humble, patient, etc. We often identify specific people as having specific virtues, but in the presence of a man like Blue, these all blurred together to form the image of a life and a person. All along, while Blue was living a life filled with joy and love for other people, he was faithing; when he befriended the workmen at his lumberyard, Blue was faithing; even when he flew his brightly-colored kites off the top of his skyscraper, Blue was faithing, too. Faith, true eye-opening faith, engenders all these things, and yet at the same time, faith tends to show through in the background, providing the canvas that subsequent virtues are viewed upon. In this way, virtue in the presence of faith is somewhat different than the virtue viewed alone. Or perhaps the full development of virtue is only possible in the context of faith. Had you asked Blue his opinions on virtue theory, he probably would have laughed and taken you on a walk around the nearest lake. Virtue was not theory for Blue, it was literally a way of life. To suggest otherwise would have seemed rather strange to him, and yet Blue was almost at all times what would be called virtuous. The only difference between theory and Blue’s action is that Blue didn’t need to try to be virtuous, it just, well ... happened, resultant of his life orientation. As St. Francis of Assisi once said, and Blue would have agreed, “Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”
The last thing about faith (covered in this meager paper, anyway) is that faith tends to be the truest evidence of its own truth. When Blue worked in the lumberyard, it was not a lofty tone of voice and meticulous logical argument that drew the workmen to him, but it was Blue himself and the way he respected and loved them. Logic and argumentation work from the outside in, they are implanted externally and attempt to root themselves in our mind. Blue and his living witness of his own faith, on the other hand, work in quite the opposite way. A life lived with virtue and integrity does not seek to impose its virtue on people, but rather draws the same things out of people. As Blue once told his friend, “An amiable good life does more than all the religious newspapers printed ...” (94). What is most human in all of us is not drawn out only by our own faith, but also by the faith of others. You can believe that those lumbermen had probably never so much as set foot in church, but their short acquaintance with Blue was enough to touch something deep within them and win their loyalty. Kierkegaard would have looked on a person like Blue and smiled, I’m sure. On this same note, Kierkegaard writes “Christianity-and this is the crucial point that makes this doctrine something other than a doctrine-was served by witnesses to the truth, ... who did not ... live off the doctrine but lived and died for the doctrine” (129). Blue lived this truth that he also believed. When the narrator visits Blue for the last time in the hospital, he is reminded himself of the great impact of Blue’s life on everyone around him.
He thought I was going to scold him for being ill in a hospital, as if I thought his being ill were a sort of lark! What I wanted to tell him was that the sight of him was inspiration to me, and courage, and faith. I wanted to tell him that the spectacle of him alive and smiling cleansed me-as it always did-of the cynicism and skepticism that settled like dirt on my mind. Here he was, on his back, worn, thin, brave, smiling, the dream still dominant in his eyes,-and here he was hoping he had not “bothered” me. (113)

Whenever Blue was with someone, they saw what he saw, felt as he felt, were swept through with the beauty of life in the same way he was. Blue’s gift was the ability to draw out of other people what he himself drew upon: the beautiful, the good, the spiritual; Blue’s sincere humanness touched the deepest humanity in others. And truly this is faith itself.

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