Responding to your comments: faith vs. will, collegiality

Two readers commented on a post from a while ago where I wrote:

"To me, a person who acts faithfully despite disbelief is a better Christian than one who believes: that is faith as an act of will, rather than as a sort of innate tendency, and a praiseworthy homage to God."

One agreed and tied the idea to the goodness we admire in non-Christians. Another disagreed and said that this seems to make "genuine, living faith a secondary thing." Thank you both for your thoughtful comments and challenges. I certainly didn't mean to devalue the great gift of "genuine, living faith," but I do think that faith that perseveres despite "dryness", or lack of spiritual surety, should have a special place of honor among believers, and might have a special place in God's heart as well. Remember how the shepherd left all the docile sheep to find the one who strayed? I've sometimes felt that there was something unfair about the idea that God does special things to reach out to the lost, as if those who aren't lost get nothing above the "standard." If I wanted to, I could probably find some way to prove that God loves lost and found equally, but I think that would be missing the point. Even the "standard" version of God's love, if there could be such a thing, would be greater and more perfect and more mysterious than we could ever understand or access in an entire life of faith. The Prodigal Son's older brother never would have known how much his father loved him if he hadn't confronted his father over what he saw as his preference for the Prodigal (Luke 15:11-32). When God is talking, how dare we not be content with "My child, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours?"

By the way, you may know that the parable of the sheperd with the lost sheep is followed by the story of the woman who lights and sweeps her entire house to find one lost coin (Luke 15:1-10). I am leading the charge to refer to Jesus also as the Good Housekeeper. Please join me.

Another reader caught me in a misuse of the word "collegiality", which means the collaboration of the Pope with the bishops on church governance (Redemptor Hominis, 1979). I meant to hope that Archbishop Levada would support agency by individual dioceses and regions, honoring the principle of subsidiarity - not that more collegiality in the coming Church wouldn't be exciting as well. Thanks for keeping me accurate!