Faith, Belief and Vision

Chapter 21 – 4. Faith, Belief and Vision

All special relationships have sin as their goal. For they are bargains with
reality, toward which the seeming union is adjusted. Forget not this; to
bargain is to set a limit, and any brother with whom you have a limited
relationship, you hate. You may attempt to keep the bargain in the name of
“fairness,” sometimes demanding payment of yourself, perhaps more often
of the other. Thus in the “fairness” you attempt to ease the guilt that comes
from the accepted purpose of the relationship. And that is why the Holy
 
Spirit must change its purpose to make it useful to him and harmless to you.
 
If you accept this change, you have accepted the idea of making room for
truth. The source of sin is gone. You may imagine that you still experience
its effects, but it is not your purpose and you no longer want it. No one
allows a purpose to be replaced while he desires it, for nothing is so
cherished and protected as is a goal the mind accepts. This it will follow,
grimly or happily, but always with faith and with the persistence that faith
inevitably brings. The power of faith is never recognized if it is placed in
sin. But it is always recognized if it is placed in love.
 
Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a
little feat for such a power. For faith can keep the Son of God in chains as
long as he believes he is in chains. And when he is released from them it
will be simply because he no longer believes in them, withdrawing faith that
they can hold him, and placing it in his freedom instead. It is impossible to
place equal faith in opposite directions. What faith you give to sin you take
away from holiness. And what you offer holiness has been removed from
sin.
 
Faith and belief and vision are the means by which the goal of holiness is
reached. Through them the Holy Spirit leads you to the real world, and
away from all illusions where your faith was laid. This is his direction; the
only one he ever sees. And when you wander, he reminds you there is but
one. his faith and his belief and vision are all for you. And when you have
accepted them completely instead of yours, you will have need of them no
longer. For faith and vision and belief are meaningful only before the state
of certainty is reached. In Heaven they are unknown. Yet Heaven is reached
through them.
 
It is impossible that the Son of God lack faith, but he can choose where he
would have it be. Faithlessness is not a lack of faith, but faith in nothing.
 
Faith given to illusions does not lack power, for by it does the Son of God
believe that he is powerless. Thus is he faithless to himself, but strong in
faith in his illusions about himself. For faith, perception and belief you
made, as means for losing certainty and finding sin. This mad direction was
your choice, and by your faith in what you chose, you made what you
desired.
 
The Holy Spirit has a use for all the means for sin by which you sought to
find it. But as he uses them they lead away from sin, because his purpose
lies in the opposite direction. he sees the means you use, but not the purpose
for which you made them. He would not take them from you, for he sees
their value as a means for what he wills for you. You made perception that
you might choose among your brothers, and seek for sin with them. The
 
Holy Spirit sees perception as a means to teach you that the vision of a holy
relationship is all you want to see. Then will you give your faith to
holiness, desiring and believing in it because of your desire.
 
Faith and belief become attached to vision, as all the means that once served
sin are redirected now toward holiness. For what you think is sin is
limitation, and whom you try to limit to the body you hate because you fear.
In your refusal to forgive him, you would condemn him to the body because
the means for sin are dear to you. And so the body has your faith and your
belief. But holiness would set your brother free, removing hatred by
removing fear, not as a symptom, but at its source.
 
Those who would free their brothers from the body can have no fear. They
have renounced the means for sin by choosing to let all limitations be
removed. As they desire to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power
of belief and faith goes far beyond the body, supporting vision, not
obstructing it. But first they chose to recognize how much their faith had
limited their understanding of the world, desiring to place its power
elsewhere should another point of view be given them. The miracles that
follow this decision are also born of faith. For all who choose to look away
from sin are given vision, and are led to holiness.
 
Those who believe in sin must think the Holy Spirit asks for sacrifice, for
this is how they think their purpose is accomplished. Brother, the Holy
Spirit knows that sacrifice brings nothing. He makes no bargains. And if
you seek to limit him, you will hate him because you are afraid. The gift
that he has given you is more than anything that stands this side of Heaven.
 
The instant for its recognition is at hand. Join your awareness to what has
been already joined. The faith you give your brother can accomplish this.
 
For he who loves the world is seeing it for you, without one spot of sin upon
it, and in the innocence that makes the sight of it as beautiful as Heaven.
 
Your faith in sacrifice has given it great power in your sight; except you do
not realize you cannot see because of it. For sacrifice must be exacted of a
body, and by another body. The mind could neither ask it nor receive it of
itself. And no more could the body. The intention is in the mind, which tries
to use the body to carry out the means for sin in which the mind believes.
 
Thus is the joining of mind and body an inescapable belief of those who
value sin. And so is sacrifice invariably a means for limitation, and thus for
hate.
 
Think you the Holy Spirit is concerned with this? He gives not what it is his
purpose to lead you from. You think he would deprive you for your good.
 
But “good” and “deprivation” are opposites, and cannot meaningfully join in
any way. It is like saying that the moon and sun are one because they come
with night and day, and so they must be joined. Yet sight of one is but the
sign the other has disappeared from sight. Nor is it possible that what gives
light be one with what depends on darkness to be seen. Neither demands the
sacrifice of the other. Yet on the absence of the other does each depend.
 
The body was made to be a sacrifice to sin, and in the darkness so it still is
seen. Yet in the light of vision it is looked upon quite differently. You can
have faith in it to serve the Holy Spirit’s goal, and give it power to serve as
means to help the blind to see. But in their seeing they look past it, as do
you. The faith and the belief you gave it belongs beyond. You gave
perception and belief and faith from mind to body. Let them now be given
back to what produced them, and can use them still to save itself from what
it made.