Gospel Guidebook: Getting and Keeping It Right 
Causation, Correlation, and Lies of Religion
by Robert P. TerryUpdated July 20, 2025
In every area of life, except the realm of religion, people intuitively understand what it means to believe something. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary defines "believe" primarily as "To accept as true or real." This is what "believe" means in every area of life. However, in the realm of religion, people are just supposed to "accept as true or real" that believe means something entirely different. The Dictionary goes on to provide the supplemental definition as "To have firm faith, especially religious faith." Redefining believe to mean something other than "To accept as true or real" is one of the lies that "the god of this world uses to blind the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" (adapted from 2 Cor. 4:4).
This lie about the meaning of believe allows Satan's angels of light to teach that there is an inherent relationship between faith and works, just like there is between a fruit tree and its fruit. Faith is just one variable among other variables that are needed to create the conditions to perform works, but faith by itself is incapable of doing anything. In many cases, there are also confounding variables, such as irrationality, that contribute to people acting totally opposite of what we would have expected. There are many biblical accounts where believers often acted contrary to their beliefs and where similar beliefs were often accompanied by vastly different behaviors.
Instead of speaking of causation, it would be more biblical to speak of correlation. Faith and works are positively correlated. This is described in James 2 where James, rather than explaining how faith supposedly produces works, quite to the contrary explains how works need to be added to faith. What James taught is, in every respect, the complete opposite of what we hear in the pulpits. James shows that there are benefits from supplying works to faith, and as such, it shouldn't surprise us to find faith and works often together. This explains the correlative relationship between faith and works. As for a causative relationship, if the people in the pulpit would just take James' words at face value, they'd discover that James says nothing from which we can draw any conclusions about causation at all.
As I've said several on this website, it is not possible to understand the Gospel properly while holding to a faulty understanding of the nature of faith. If Jesus did it all, then there is no room for a "religious faith." Faith merely "accepts as true or real" the content of the Gospel. People who are holding onto a "religious faith" that produces works like a fruit tree have misunderstood the Gospel. For a more detailed explanation on the relationship between faith and works, causation and correlation, and the application in some key passages of Scripture, please see the articles New Perspective on James and Relationship between Faith and Works in Key Passages.