The Multiple Choice Test of Faith

What if Faith could be measured as simply as a multiple choice test? Or, more accurately, suppose a multiple choice test item could be a suitable metaphor for assessing one's understanding of "faith." Understanding would not automatically make faith (you have to do faith), but it would provide a good foundation for it. 

  In the below outline, I suggest several potentially controversial incorrect answers to "the answer" concerning "faith." The proposed correct answer suggests an indefinite but holistic and synergistic and paradoxical "answer" to what faith is, or is composed of. Do you agree with the "all-three-as-a-whole" conception of spirit-forming-faith?

  I see these three as branches off of the one tree trunk of "spirit."  Mind is "seeing there." Love is "getting there." and Soul is "being there." Where "there" is a moving target of evolution or spiritual growth. My use of the below biblical quote (about loving God with all your...) assumes that "love" means to follow or align with God, and that only one of the ways to follow or align with God (or ulitimate Nature) is to love (as we normally use the word "love"). The action or doing mode of spirit is love. Spirit "does" differently than flesh (that does/acts/works with hands instead of with heart).

  But love is not enough. It is necessary, but not sufficient. I see all three modes of spirit as necessary if we are to sustain spiritual growth.

   All too often in the spiritual literature, one of the three branches of spirit is emphasized to the omission of the other two. This accidentally creates a kind of competition between different human gifts (I'm right and you're wrong."). The three blind men grabbing at different parts of the whole elephant comes to mind.

  Thinkers and intuiters naturally "get"/understand "seeing" a bit easier than they do "loving" or "being."A lover/relater might see the thinker or intuiter as lost or wrong, instead of merely incomplete, and the lover/relater may fail to see that they need the "see-er" as much as the seer needs them. The meditative guru who has mastered simply being here now may look down his or her nose at both thinkers (and intuiters), and at lovers/relaters, and the "being there" expert may fail to see how the other gift sets are needed to make the "be-er" complete as well.

  Wilber's profound distinction between state and stage may be better understood if we assume that "horozontal enlightenment" is the development of the soul function, or "being there," but that does not automatically create stage advance because it may lack one or both of the other two arms/branches/modes of spirit. All three branches of spirit are need to grow spiritually, or to develope one's "faith." IMO. 

 The Multiple Choice Test of Faith

"23. Faith is developed from/by: 

        a. love

        b. peace

        c. truth

        d. all of the above

        e. none of the above. "

The correct answer (IMO!):

Love is not the answer.

Peace is not the answer.

Even truth is not the answer. 

The answer is both d. and e., all of the above and none of the above. 

Here is why: 

Love God (wholeness) with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. 

  Means honor/follow God with all three functions of 

    Seeing there (mind/truth), Getting there (heart/love), and Being there (soul/peace), but none alone nor not all three simply pasted together - only all three woven together in an integrated fashion that only God/Wholeness can allow.