To believe is defined as having confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so. To have faith in something is to have confidence or trust in a person or thing. This distinction is an especially important one when considering the Jesuit’s faith at the end of “The Star,” because, although the Jesuit believes in a God by the end of the story, he doesn’t have faith in that God.
Religious belief demands mostly, if not completely, blind faith from the followers of a given deity. Up until this point, we can assume that the Jesuit is a very faithful man; even among other men of science, who, according to the Jesuit, are likely to claim agnosticism or atheism, the Jesuit remains devout, and does not try to hide it. At the end of the story, however, there is a marked shift in the Jesuit’s attitude toward his God. Instead of acceptance of the supernova as God’s will, he begins to ask questions.
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However, he questions the actions of a God that he feels he doesn’t know, a God that is still both omnipotent, omniscient, but that lacks the qualities that the Jesuit has been told to nurture in the hopes of becoming closer to his Lord. The Jesuit struggles to reconcile these two opposite images, one of the God he knows, and the other a God whose actions he finds