Queen Elizabeth II carries the title Defender of the Faith. The title has been passed down through centuries to the reigning British monarch. Originally, the title was conferred upon Henry VIII by the Pope, so originally it related to the Catholic Church, and later to the Anglican Church.

Personally, I’m not very interested in defending the beliefs of any particular religion or spiritual teaching. I am interested in the faith that people have in themselves. I am interested in placing my faith in the people around me. I am interested in the faith we have in each other and in life itself.

The kind of faith I am speaking of is born out of faith in the Creator, who is within all people. I have faith in that Reality. I have faith not just in the sense of believing it is true, but faith in the sense of profound assurance of the unfoldment of Creation from the Creator.

People can lose faith in themselves. Humanity’s faith in itself is currently at risk in so many ways. And so we’re called to be defenders of the faith. A defender of the faith isn’t so much battling the elements that would attack faith, although assaults upon faith are in the picture for most people. It is knowing to set those things aside—to set aside a person’s judgment of themselves, as well as your own judgment. It is moving past all those things to go right to the core of the matter and have faith in the source of life itself. I have faith in the Creator, which is the core reality of all people. And I am not waiting for other people to have faith in me before I have faith in them.

We tend to think that our faith in people should be performance-based, meaning that if somebody performs well, we’ll have faith in them. Or, if all turns out well, we’ll have faith in what happened or what is happening. How irrelevant is that? We don’t need faith after it’s all over. We need faith now. We need faith in the middle of what’s happening, whatever it is. And we need a kind of faith that is bigger than what’s happening and that isn’t dependent on what’s happening. Because when things are in the midst of Creation, with all that falls apart and all that comes together in a human life, if our faith is tied to what is happening, we’re sunk. We need a faith that blows right by all that. We need profound faith in the work of the Creator now in the middle of it all. We need that kind of faith in ourselves and other people, and for us all.

If there is a determining factor in the evolution of humanity, it is this—people of this kind of faith. It’s particularly relevant for the children of the world. As it is, they’ve got adults running around saying, The sky is falling down! Is that expressing faith in our children? They need defenders of the faith, and that’s true for any of us who have any kind of role of eldership for anybody else, not just children. More than anything, it is the power of our faith that makes the difference. It is our ability to place the hand of faith on the shoulder of another that tells the tale of whether we are really stepping into our eldership. Faith is a positive, radiant act with respect to another person. It’s not a reflective, judgmental act: it is a positive radiant statement to another person.

Sunrise Ranch was built on that kind of faith. Emissaries of Divine Light was built on that kind of faith. The people who came before us had that kind of faith, and I know it because they placed it in me. If we are to truly follow in their footsteps, that’s what we do for others.

Some of us have had the privilege of feeling the faith that someone else had in us. But we can all know that the Creator in us is extending faith to us every moment. We are being trusted with life itself, now and now and now and now.

Take a moment to feel the hand of faith on your shoulder. Now think about how you are going to offer that to the people in your world.