Podcast Episode: Understanding Faith: Beyond Belief and Action

Pip: There’s a light switch somewhere in this metaphor, and whether you flip it turns out to be the whole argument.

Mara: That’s actually the opening image from a post by cj on The Way of the Rabbi. Today we’re working through what faith actually requires — the Hebrew and Greek roots, the tension between belief and action, and what Paul’s warnings in Colossians have to do with how we read scripture now.

Pip: Let’s start with what faith is, and what it isn’t.

Understanding Faith: Beyond Belief and Action

Mara: The post opens with a distinction that shapes everything that follows: belief is intellectual, faith is active. Belief alone, as the post puts it, gets you nowhere if it is not active.

Pip: And to make that concrete, the post gives us the light switch. You can believe the switch works, believe the lights are functional — but if you don’t flip it, the room stays dark. Belief without action is just standing in the dark with a correct opinion.

Mara: The Hebrew word for faith is אֱמוּנָה — Emunah — and the post defines it precisely: “It means a steadiness, as in a steady walk of obedience. A steadfastness, faithfulness in keeping the ordinances of God.”

Pip: So Emunah isn’t a feeling or a declaration. It’s a gait. The way you actually move through the world.

Mara: And then the post turns to the Greek counterpart, pistis. The argument is that pistis carries a different weight — “faith without power, faith without substance, a mental understanding without an outward expression.” That’s the lens through which James’s line about faith without works gets reread: James is combining two Greek words to express one Hebrew truth.

Pip: Works here is ergon — occupation, undertaking. So James isn’t adding a checklist to faith. He’s saying faith and its expression are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other showing up somewhere.

Mara: The post then moves to Paul’s warning in Colossians, and this is where the argument gets pointed. Paul writes: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to the human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Messiah.”

Pip: The post reads that warning not as a release from God’s instruction but as the opposite — a caution against Greek philosophical culture and man-made tradition displacing Torah observance.

Mara: Right. The argument is that when Paul mentions food, drink, festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths in that same chapter, he’s defending those who keep them, not dismissing the practices. The post draws a direct line from that first-century tension to the present: the same argument about which observances are binding is still being made today.

Pip: And the post ends where it began — back to Emunah. Not perfection, but a steady walk. The question it leaves open is whether you want human tradition or God’s instruction.

Mara: That question is the whole episode in miniature.

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Pip: Flip the switch or don’t — but the post is clear that calling it faith while leaving your hand in your pocket is a category error.

Mara: The roots of these words carry the whole argument. Next time, we’ll see where that steady walk leads.