Sunday Thought - November 10, 2013: What is Faith?

What is faith?
 

That is a question I posed to myself last week.  I don't know why I do that to myself.  It's one of those questions that I find myself pondering at 2:30 in the morning as I stare at a ceiling I can't see in the dark.  Finally I just say, screw it, roll over and, like the preverbal coyote woman one might mistakenly take home from a bar, I come face to face with it again.  I finally end up down at the computer at around 3:30 or so, make a cup of coffee and work on a post.

Faith, as a post, is in draft.  It may be there for another week.  Faith as a woman would be easier to deal with, maybe.  As a noun, faith defines the bullshit we live by.  If it can't be explained, faith will save the day.  Our religious leaders have been copping to this since Christ died for us.  Televangelists love faith.  It keeps their coffers full.  "I can't really tell you why sending me your life savings will buy your spot in heaven.  Have faith!  Praise, God!"  Please.  But, the yokels keep sending in the cash and wondering where their next meal is coming from while Reverend Joe eats at the finest restaurants.  Don't worry.  God will provide.  Have faith!

I know a whole bunch of you are tuning out right now.  Heaven forbid!  He has no faith!  Gasp!  By definition, I have loads of faith.  I have faith there is a God.  I have faith that Jesus was a great teacher and died on the cross for us to show us how much faith he had in what he was preaching.  I have faith there is an afterlife, even though it may be a rebirth into this world as punishment for my sins in this life.  I have faith that if there is supreme evil, there is supreme good, and if a thousand people die in a catastrophe there will be a thousand babies born to bring the universe back into balance.

I have so much faith.  I have faith that God wants us to fight to live; to not go gentle into that good night.  I think Dylan Thomas was onto it:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

                 

Finally, I think God just wants us to believe.  Believe and keep searching, and striving, to be the best we can be.  To have faith, in something!  If atheism is your belief, then be the best atheist you can be, but be a good person and live a good, giving life.  If you don't believe in God but die saving others, is this not faith?  Is it not faith in the good of the many outweighing the good of the few, or the one?  For a Christian, for a human, for any living being, there is can be no greater love than sacrificing one's life for another.  Belief in God becomes a moot point.  God will shake this out with us in the afterlife, but how you live your life speaks volumes.

As with Don Quixote, doubt is crucial is his faith of his own "created" reality.  I give you an excerpt to ponder from Faith, Doubt, Sanity, and Don Quixote by James F. McGrath:

So we focused next on another question. If being extremely deceived or deluded is (or is indistinguishable from) insanity, then how do we avoid having that happen to us? It was at this point that I was struck by the answer that students gave:

Doubt.

Doubt has been the least favorite of the three elements that make up the title of the class. Not that anyone is opposed to doubting – everyone doubts the truthfulness of hundreds of things people say that they a inclined to disagree with, and such doubt aimed at others is not incompatible with insanity. it is the doubting of one's own perspective that the students suggested is the key to avoiding delusion and insanity. As long as Quixote does not doubt that he is a knight, that windmills are giants, and other things he interprets in his unique way are what he thinks they are, not only is he out of his mind, but there is little hope that sanity and reality can get through to him.

And so it turns out that doubt is crucially important, and it is essential that, if we have been told that doubting the correctness of our assumptions and beliefs is inappropriate and destructive, we come to doubt that. Because unwillingness to do so eliminates one of the few effective means we have as human beings to remain sane and prevent strong and dangerous delusions from taking hold of us. Or at the very least, even if doubt may not be able to altogether inoculate us against loss of sanity, doubting our perception and our views seems to be something that indicates that we have not lost it yet.

Do you see the quandary?  Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Deist or Atheist, faith makes you right, but doubt? "...if we have been told that doubting the correctness of our assumptions and beliefs is inappropriate and destructive, we come to doubt that. Because unwillingness to do so eliminates one of the few effective means we have as human beings to remain sane and prevent strong and dangerous delusions from taking hold of us." 

Interesting.

This Sunday pour a cup of coffee or tea, open a dictionary and look up definitions of "faith."  Ask yourself if it is really as cut and dry as that religious "leader," that leads you around by the nose, would like you to believe.  Or, does God expect more of you than subservience to a church that was never asked for, to rules and demands that might not have been God's desire for us.  Does doubt make you stronger because your belief in God becomes your belief in God?

My own doubts have given me faith in a more loving and forgiving God than that described in a Bible written by men, for men, in a world controlled by men.

I have faith that God knows.

Bless all of you this Sunday.  Love each other and kiss your children.  They can be the best part of us, if we love them unconditionally.