Faith. It's the name of a beautiful woman. For some it's the means of grace, and for others it's a form of delusion, a kind of futile self-deceit. Faith can be a bulwark for some but a crutch for others.

Paul Goodman once referred to faith as a kind of foolish optimism. He said: "?faith is knowing, beyond awareness, that if one takes a step there will be ground underfoot; one gives oneself unhesitatingly to the act, one has faith that the background will produce the means."

This is the classical existential leap, trusting that something in the mix of one's life will support whatever risk might be present by stepping into the unknown. Such an approach to living invests in the proposition that no real life can be lived accept at the edge where what has already been lived meets what is still only potential experience, having never been done, never been visited, never been seen, heard, smelled, touched or known in any way before.

In the Bible faith is two-pronged. It's the proof of what you can't see, and it's the action you take based on that proof. Goodman seemed to understand this as well, for he said that the self has power but no sense of security. "It has perhaps a sense of readiness: the acceptance of excitement, a certain foolish optimism about the alterability of reality, and an habitual memory that the organism regulates itself and does not in the end wear out or explode."

He described how stepping out on this kind of faith produces experience which then confirms and reinforces one's readiness. This is the sense of faith described in the book of James, in the New Testament, where faith that has no concomitant enactment based on conviction is dead. It is stillborn, because it never was completed. There is belief THAT and there is trust IN. When one entrusts oneself to the care of one's beliefs, that is Biblical faith.

Goodman's existentialism was more in the line of Kierkegaard than Sartre. Goodman was one of the thinkers behind the first developmental stage in the theory of Gestalt therapy, and those founders expressly turned away from the nihilism in one branch of existentialism. Thus, the leap of faith into the unknown for them was not, and IS not, a totally blind leap. It is based on previous experience and contains a sufficient reason to believe THAT and to trust IN.

When considered in these ways, faith is not an extreme option for the weakest people in society; it's an essential part of living for everyone. Further, faith is not opposite to knowing, because some kinds of knowing are only obtained through faith. Even still further, there is not one kind of faith for religious folk but another for everyone else. Faith is faith. Period.

The real issues are the objects of one's faith and the sufficient reasons that give warrant to what one believes.

In accord with that last thought, Alvin Plantinga wrote a great book titled in which he explored the question that for intelligent and educated people living in the twenty-first century, with all that has happened over the last four or five hundred years, is Christian belief acceptable? Is there sufficient ground to support such faith?

That question can only really be answered subjectively. Although there may be sufficient reason "out there" somewhere in the world, available to people who have the courage to investigate, if a person lacks even that little measure of faith, based on what they have already experienced, to risk such investigating, then for them, such faith is unwarranted. For them, they lack the faith to find out, and that becomes the story of life.

This is what Jesus meant when he said that even that tiny bit of faith, like the size of a mustard seed, could move mountains. Why? Because it gives one a starting point in living life and leads to greater and greater things.

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Dr. Philip Brownell, M.Div., Psy.D., is a psychologist at Benedict Associates. Send e-mails to crossroadsg-gej.org