I'm going to try this again. I went off on bit of a tangent yesterday. Today, I'd like to focus on how I perceive faith.
Faith seems to make some people uncomfortable. Most of the time this is illogical. Take for instance (the entirely fictional) atheist who is certain that aliens exist. There is no evidence of alien sentience. None at all. Believing in something with no proof; that's called faith.
Take now, an agnostic who overflows with self-determination and lives in a state of self-actualization. I cannot measure how self-actualized someone is. Determination and confidence are subjective as well. The only measure is said individual's belief in those concepts. I call that faith, too.
It is my impression that the Abrahamic traditions have convinced the cultures that they influenced that someone can't have faith unless it is in The God of Monotheism. This is unfair. I am a well spring of faith. And I am very polytheistic.
Faith has become a dirty word in the cultures of science and high technology. I want to see more people describing how they feel with the word. Faith and intuition are two of the most useful gifts that humans have, but we are spending decade after decade trying to make them taboo.
There may be no evidence of sentient alien life, but there is evidence of sentient life. I don't think the alien example is as much of an act of faith as you make it sound.
ReplyDeleteI'm not comfortable with faith either. I realize that's ridiculous, being a religious person (and you're right, I feel weird about saying I'm religious BECAUSE I'm not a believer in A god, but in many. But still. Faith. It makes me a little squicky, honestly, telling someone to "have faith." Or talking about myself as a "person of faith." But I am, of course. I was never really raised to put my faith in my gods, though. I can't remember my father ever saying anything like, "Cernunnos (his patron deity) will provide." Instead, it was "I'll ask Cernunnos to help ME."
ReplyDeleteThis is all a long way of saying that, at least in my personal experience of Paganism, the emphasis is on faith in one's inner godhood rather than a more helpless-seeming (to me) reliance on an external omnipotent.
The typos! They are legion! Aargh! Sorry. :)
DeleteI tend to think of faith as a very active thing. Because you believe certain things, you *do* certain things. People fall in love, have children, pursue their dream jobs, reach out to other people, try to make their communities a little better. None of that is guaranteed to be a success, but people do those things anyway. I think that's the ultimate sign of faith. And yes, some people will do things with their faith that I far from approve of. But I think of faith as the thing that makes people take their lives on adventures instead of keeping them in boxes where they will be "safe."
ReplyDeleteI used to have a lot of conviction in Christianity, but I found faith when I turned to the gods. I don't see faith as reliance on an external omnipotence. I am at the mercy of the gods anyway, but I have faith in them that the world will unfold as they intend. I guess faith is synonymous with knowing I can trust the gods and in return they will look out for me. Of course, I know that most of the time they will be busy with godly concerns. My faith describes empowering the trust I have in them to aid me when they can.
ReplyDeleteI would never expect a god to provide for me. That's just not their nature. I don't know of any god of handouts. Faith in one's inner godhood is a bit different than the way I feel about faith in the gods. My divinity and their divinity are separated by a few orders of magnitude. I'll write more about personal divinity in the future.