Blind Faith Fails Peacemaking.
Faith plays a vital role in peacemaking, especially in Divine Collaboration; however, the faith of which I speak is a living faith, not blind faith.
Blind faith represents a belief in something assumed but not known.
Typically, blind faith is rote belief in axioms or tenets and is tantamount to “holding a position”—harboring an inflexible stance. As such, blind faith promotes impasse.
In contrast, a faith grounded in a relationship with a living God does not serve as a placeholder for the unknown, but rather is infused with spiritual insight. A lived faith produces mystical or spiritual knowing that transcends guesswork that might plug the gaps in one’s mundane knowledge.
Lived faith lifts one into communion with the divine, into mystical union.
Deeper Understanding of Needs and Interests
When one brings lived faith into a negotiation, one brings a much deeper understanding of actual needs and interests, especially spiritual needs and interests that transcend worldly concerns. With lived faith, the focus is on relationship, divine relationship, the foundation of all other relationships.
Blind faith results in an ideological stance that promotes impasse. Often, when I speak of faith-based mediation I trigger expressions of skepticism. Christians express doubt that they can engage in meaningful dialogue with non-Christians. This is true with blind faith, but not true when they bring lived faith to the table.
Thus, when you experience impasse, either as a party or as a mediator, assess the focus of the participants—do they present blind faith or lived faith? Does one participant insist the other accept doctrinal statements of faith as true? Or are the participants able to share their lived experience of their faith journeys?