What is faith? Is it a mystical, wispy thing that we can put on things? Or is it just designed to make us feel good like rose-colored glasses? We answer all of these questions and more in this episode of Disrupt Reality as host Tonya Dawn Recla is joined by guest Rabbi Simon Jacobson. Rabbi Jacobson believes that faith is not the absence of reason, it is something beyond reason. Rabbi Jacobson also emphasizes that faith is coming to realize that as much as there are ideas that can be proven by facts, there are also fundamental beliefs and actions that are driven by something beyond reason. Join Tonya and Rabbi Simon Jacobson in today’s episode to know more about faith and what it truly is.Â
Hello everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert. And I am so thrilled to have back on the show today, Rabbi Simon Jacobson. He’s so great. You listened to his first episode that we did, finding life and meaning, and so you already know about him. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to it, go back and listen to that one, because we’re going to dive right in today and just start our conversation in a space that really is near and dear to my heart. This concept of faith, where we’re going to look at faith in action and how people use faith, because in all of these conversations that I’ve been so gifted to have, and honored really to get intimate with people about their walk with God or their developmental journeys or the ways that they butt up against reality in different ways and how they deal with that.
All of you have so many diverse experiences in this space. I think it’s important to talk about it and throw the word faith around a lot, but I don’t know if everybody spends as much time thinking about it as I do, and what I have found is that there are some real solid common threads interwoven in the lives and in the beingness of the folks who step forward and say, “Hey, I know we can do this differently. I know we can do this better. My heart cares about this. I want to see us uplift each other and to love and to feel loved.” In that space there is a lot of room, I think, for us to find those commonalities.
We’re launching this faith-in-action series. We’re going to start off here today and just talk about what is faith? What are we talking about? Is it this mystical, wispy thing, this magical spell that we can put on things? Or is it just designed to make us feel good like rose-colored glasses? Or is it real? Is there something of substance in it that we can really grip and get behind to maybe support us better in times of tribulation and trying times when we don’t know where to go?
Lean into this. I’m sure you’re going to hear stuff that you don’t necessarily agree with, that your mind pieces are going to have some trouble with being like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, I don’t know that I believe that.” This isn’t designed so you can find that alignment with the beliefs, but rather that you find yourself in the conversation, and more importantly, hopefully, open that up to some higher element to inform you what faith could do for you and your existence. With that as the framework, with that as the container, we’re going to jump right in here and just talk about, first of all, let’s define faith. What is faith to you? And welcome back to the show. Welcome. And thank you for coming back to the show.
Thank you, Tonya, for having me and an excellent question. I think it’s vital, to begin with, first of all, dispelling some of the myths and stereotypes around faith. Many of them include that faith is for the children. It’s for people who are not rational, not open-minded thinkers, it’s a crutch. Well, let’s distinguish between childish and immature faith, which is simply like a little child holding their mother or father’s hand when they cross the street. That’s basically just because a child is still young and vulnerable and immature. True faith is a very sophisticated resource in our souls and our spirits. It’s not the absence of reason, it’s beyond reason. It’s coming to realize that as much as I have a rational mind and I have ideas that can be proven and empirical evidence and so on that there are fundamental beliefs and fundamental even actions that are driven by something beyond reason.
Let’s say someone is dating another, how do you determine whether this is the one, this is my soulmate. It’s not purely rational. It’s obvious it should not be irrational. Well, for some it is obvious, but it should be something called super-rational. You use your mind, you use your tools to figure out is this a compatible person? Is she kind, is he compassionate, and so on, but then there’s a point where you have to make a decision? And that leap, that decision is something informed by reason and informed by objective observation, but not determined solely by that. So faith is really something that is a critical component in our lives. And I would even argue that it’s not about religion or about God even.
When the Wright Brothers were convinced that they can fly and build a flying ship called an airplane, and everyone said they were crazy, what was it that was driving them? That they knew that they could build an airplane and they finally did. I know a doctor who works a lot of research trying to conquer certain illnesses and he calls himself an atheist. So I said to him, “How are you so sure that you’re going to find a cure?” He says, “I just have the confidence that I will say.” So I say, “You’re a person of faith.” So he looked at me. I said, “Yeah, because it’s not rational. It’s just, you are determined that there’s going to be found healing for this problem. Maybe it’s not healable.”
My point is that all of us when we are determined, have a certain resolute and resolve in our souls that feels like we can achieve something. So for us to write off faith, we’re actually writing off our greatest possibilities and potential. I see faith as a hand-in-hand resource together with the mind, together with your emotions, instincts, and feelings, but it allows us to dream, to imagine, to go beyond the scope of pure logic.
I love everything. I’m sitting here with the biggest grin on my face. This was the perfect opener to set the stage for why I believe, and obviously, it feels like you believe too. Well, no, you actually stated that it’s important for us to talk about these things. I love how you’re bringing it up in the broadest sense, but not watering it down. I deal a lot with frequencies and dimensionalities and stuff. What I see is in certain frequencies we’re far more separated than in others and in certain frequencies, we don’t separate. The ability to understand each other in nuanced ways changes depending on where each of us is connecting into and how much of us is coming into the energy or the relationship that exists between us versus holding back and being an individual, and that has an impact on how we can talk about these things.
We have to start in space first thing. When we talk about faith, and you nailed it, a lot of people have connotations about the word that perhaps they’re not even aware that they have. They assume it’s about God. They assume it’s about religion, or they assume it’s something like you mentioned, a pass-through in our developmental actualization journey that we eventually grow out of. The importance of framing it up that way is to say that if we’re reacting to or responding to a concept or dismissing it out of hand because we have connotations about it, that we’ve never stopped to hold it accountable to the actual definition of it, or maybe even the purpose of it or the utilization of it, then we really limit ourselves.
The biggest, most glaring point that I feel like a lot of those of us who think about these things can say about 2020 was the evidence of that chasm between folks who knew where to go for their foundational security, for their stabilization factor, versus those who had no idea where to go. The experience of the entirety of 2020 was dramatically different, even if we just look at it in terms of those two camps of people. I get that there are privilege and socioeconomics of all up and down in those spaces, but we got to start somewhere.
That to me, in addition to everything that you just so eloquently pointed out, is why it’s so incredibly important that we have these conversations from the places where this is real. They are viable tools. This is not Pollyanna-ish. This is a synergistic element we get to play with that allows us to be in sync with the universe versus out of sync with it. We get to define that in all different ways.
We’re going to take a break because I just know this is juicy and deep. If I ask you another question, we’re going to be in it for a while. We’re going to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to dive into the faith journey, how we get to the place where this is, how we hold it, and what your particular doorways were into that. That’s a little nugget for you all to chew on before the break. But before we cut to break, where can people go to find out more about you? What website do you want to send them to?
Meaningfullife.com is the best place. It’s named after my bookstore, A Meaningful Life. There’re a full array of resources, programs, videos, you name it.
Beautiful. Folks, go check that out, and we will be right back. You’re listening to Disrupt Reality. And I’m Tonya Dawn Recla. We’re talking today about faith in action. We’re talking with Rabbi Simon Jacobson, and we will be right back, stay with us.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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