The Call for Faith

Chapter 17 – 7. The Call for Faith

The substitutes for aspects of the situation are the witnesses to your lack of
faith. They demonstrate that you did not believe the situation and the
problem were in the same place. The problem was the lack of faith, and it is
this you demonstrate when you remove it from its source and place it
elsewhere. As a result, you do not see the problem. Had you not lacked faith
that it could be solved, the problem would be gone. And the situation would
have been meaningful to you, because the interference in the way of
understanding would have been removed. To remove the problem elsewhere
is to keep it, for you remove yourself from it and make it unsolvable.
 
There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve. There is no
shift in any aspect of the problem but will make solution impossible. For if
you shift part of the problem elsewhere the meaning of the problem must be
lost, and the solution to the problem is inherent in its meaning. Is it not
possible that all your problems have been solved, but you have removed
yourself from the solution? Yet faith must be where something has been
done, and where you see it done.
 
A situation is a relationship, being the joining of thoughts. If problems are
perceived, it is because the thoughts are judged to be in conflict. But if the
goal is truth, this is impossible. Some idea of bodies must have entered, for
minds cannot attack. The thought of bodies is the sign of faithlessness, for
bodies cannot solve anything. It is their intrusion on the relationship, an
error in your thoughts about the situation, which then becomes the
justification for your lack of faith. You will make this error, but be not at all
concerned with that. The error does not matter. Faithlessness brought to
faith will never interfere with truth. But faithlessness used against truth will
always destroy faith. If you lack faith, ask that it be restored where it was
lost, and seek not to have it made up to you elsewhere, as if you had been
unjustly deprived of it.
 
Only what you have not given can be lacking in any situation. But
remember this; the goal of holiness was set for your relationship, and not by
you. You did not set it because holiness cannot be seen except through faith,
and your relationship was not holy because your faith in your brother was
so limited and little. Your faith must grow to meet the goal that has been
set. The goal’s reality will call this forth, for you will see that peace and
faith will not come separately. What situation can you be in without faith,
and remain faithful to your brother?
 
Every situation in which you find yourself is but a means to meet the
purpose set for your relationship. See it as something else and you are
faithless. Use not your faithlessness. Let it enter and look upon it calmly,
but do not use it. Faithlessness is the servant of illusion, and wholly faithful
to its master. Use it, and it will carry you straight to illusions. Be tempted
not by what it offers you. It interferes, not with the goal, but with the value
of the goal to you. Accept not the illusion of peace it offers, but look upon
its offering and recognize it is illusion.
 
The goal of illusion is as closely tied to faithlessness as faith to truth. If you
lack faith in anyone to fulfill, and perfectly, his part in any situation
dedicated in advance to truth, your dedication is divided. And so you have
been faithless to your brother, and used your faithlessness against him. No
relationship is holy unless its holiness goes with it everywhere. As holiness
and faith go hand in hand, so must its faith go everywhere with it. The
goal’s reality will call forth and accomplish every miracle needed for its
fulfillment. Nothing too small or too enormous, too weak or too compelling,
but will be gently turned to its use and purpose. The universe will serve it
gladly, as it serves the universe. But do not interfere.
 
The power set in you in whom the Holy Spirit’s goal has been established is
so far beyond your little conception of the infinite that you have no idea
how great the strength that goes with you. And you can use this in perfect
safety. Yet for all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the
universe that lies beyond them, your little faithlessness can make it useless,
if you would use the faithlessness instead.
 
Yet think on this, and learn the cause of faithlessness: You think you hold
against your brother what he has done to you. But what you really blame
him for is what you did to him. It is not his past but yours you hold against
him. And you lack faith in him because of what you were. Yet you are as
innocent of what you were as he is. What never was is causeless, and is not
there to interfere with truth. There is no cause for faithlessness, but there is
 
Cause for faith. That Cause has entered any situation that shares Its purpose.
 
The light of truth shines from the center of the situation, and touches
everyone to whom the situation’s purpose calls. It calls to everyone. There is
no situation that does not involve your whole relationship, in every aspect
and complete in every part. You can leave nothing of yourself outside it and
keep the situation holy. For it shares the purpose of your whole relationship,
and derives its meaning from it.
 
Enter each situation with the faith you give your brother, or you are faithless
to your own relationship. Your faith will call the others to share your
purpose, as the same purpose called forth the faith in you. And you will see
the means you once employed to lead you to illusions transformed to means
for truth. . When the Holy Spirit changed the purpose of your relationship
by exchanging yours for his, the goal he placed there was extended to every
situation in which you enter, or will ever enter. And every situation was
thus made free of the past, which would have made it purposeless.
 
You call for faith because of him who walks with you in every situation.
 
You are no longer wholly insane, nor no longer alone. For loneliness in God
must be a dream. You whose relationship shares the Holy Spirit’s goal are
set apart from loneliness because the truth has come. Its call for faith is
strong. Use not your faithlessness against it, for it calls you to salvation and
to peace.