You Live by
Faith

Faith. You likely immediately think of religion and either embrace, are apathetic or are possibly hostile. Yet Faith is a cornerstone for almost everyone’s mindset. As in the image with this blog, we have lots of faith without thinking of it as religious. Faith simply means to put belief or trust into something or someone as reliable, working according to expectations or worthy of entrusting your well-being into the providence of that which is beyond your creation or control. As much as that may seem religious, let’s use our picture as an example about faith:

We have a rock climber. On a rope. Under an overhang. Nothing visible underneath. He is in this situation by choice and has brought equipment to assist. To overcome the obstacle, he is using the rope for security while he positions himself for his next move. We are unsure whether he is going up or down but he knows his intention. He has chosen the rope and his gear as an appropriate resource for his situation. He believes the rope is of high enough quality to serve his purpose. He is wearing his climbing belt and trusts it to fulfill its purpose. He appears to have the rope secured to a pinion in the rock and trusts the placement. He is confident the rock is of a quality that will not fail to hold the pinion. He also seems confident the force of gravity will be a constant.

So, Choice, Assist, Security, Intention, Resources, Belief, Trust, Confidence – yes, he has Faith – in the equipment, the rock, his skills, his knowledge, his experience. He has been in this kind of situation before and accomplished his purposes. Whether or not he goes through a mental checklist or simply ‘feels’ the confidence that this has been successful before, he has faith in the resources.

Belief is like that – we learn the trustworthiness of what we rely upon to accomplish the goal before us. Most of us trust the worthiness of our food and water supply to be healthy, we trust the electrical wiring in our homes, workplaces, shopping entertainment venues to be correctly installed and not be harmful to us. We believe that we are generally safe from Chicken Little’s “the sky is falling” and do not live in fear that the ground we are walking upon will cease to support us adequately. We trust other drivers to use reasonable care in operation of their vehicles in proximity to us in traffic. Most of us have confidence that we will need the things we possess today to live again tomorrow. Faith is placed in both tangibles and intangibles

There are limits to our Faith or areas where we are not as certain of the outcome – things like politics, relationships, the unforeseen future, our personal health or the welfare of those for which we care. These are realms where we have uncertainty, we don’t hold enough of the pieces or have enough experience or control to have confidence in the outcome as we intend. In these we tend to act with uncertainty, un-faith.

Thoughts on “Faith” continue in the blog “Popular Belief Systems“ and “Religious in America“.