Taking a Look at Faith

I have friends who are, at best, agnostic when it comes to things like God and religion.  Some believe that religion is a kind of weakness.  Some believe that having faith in something that cannot be seen or proven is just a way of believing in fairy tales and whistling past the graveyard.  They want to look down upon those of us who believe in something beyond this world as silly and antiquated and somehow unenlightened. 

Let me first state that I do count myself among those unenlightened.  If there were to be a name applied to me it would be that of Christian.  While I have written before of my problems of people who become blind Christians and my problems with organized religion the fact is that I do believe in God and Jesus Christ and all of that.  While some of the more fanciful parts of the Bible I feel should be taken as allegory and symbolism I do believe the general heart of what Christianity teaches.  What people forget is that the general theme and heart of the part of the Bible known as The New Testament is that God is love and that you need to have faith.   

So, ignoring all of the things that go with Christianity and whether or not a man born a thousand years ago was divine or not let’s just look at what most religion is.  Most religion, in the end encourages you to believe in something that cannot be proven.  It cannot be measured and it cannot be laid out on a table and revealed.  Most religions also come down to a belief in love.  In short it all comes down to faith.  This is the part where my friends often have trouble. 

Let’s look at the idea of faith.  Take faith away from religion and look at it as belief in something happening that you cannot control.  When you sit in an airplane you have faith that this machine that is obviously very heavy will lift into the air and take you wherever it is you are planning to travel.  You also have faith that the men in the cockpit know what they are doing.  You have faith that the day they taught take offs and landings wasn’t the day this particular pilot was asleep.  You also have faith that when you put your car key into the ignition that your car will start. 

Sure, you say, but each of those things involves science.  Science and theory and the application of that theory is what permits an airplane to take off.  It is education and knowledge that allows the pilots to fly.  It takes maintenance and work and technology to allow your car to start.  Forgetting that each of those things started as a theory before they became commonplace and that testing a theory often takes faith then let me acknowledge you are correct in saying these things.  Airplanes and automobiles use science and knowledge.  They are tangible.  You can see a plane flying overhead and you can go out to your car right now and start it up.   

If that is the case then let’s look at emotion.  Emotions have no physical amounts.  You cannot grab a pinch of anger, add a dash of hate, a teaspoonful of jealousy mix it together and produce some kind of emotion cake.  Of all of the emotions the one that seems to be the most trouble and the most sought after would be that of love.  I think even the most anti-faith and agnostic would agree with me that love exists.   

Still, can you pour out a glass of love for me to see?  Can you please fry up some love on your grill and serve it to me so I can taste how good it is?  Can you please reach into your pocket and produce several coins of love that I can use to go purchase something?  Can you actually prove to me that love exists? 

Simply grabbing your spouse or child and kissing them or hugging them is not proof of love.  Grabbing your spouse or feeling the urge to hug your child are the effects of love.  You feel the love for that person and you react to it.  You are not showing that love itself exists.  You cannot point to a pile of love and tell me that this is where you get your love for this person or that person.   

In short even if you deny faith as it applies to religion then you must have faith.  You have faith in the intangible.  When you gazed upon the newborn son or daughter in your arms and felt that overwhelming feeling of love you put your faith in something that was beyond your control.  In short, you believe in something you cannot see or prove actually exists.  In short, you have faith. 

Whether or not there is a heaven is not really the point of religion.  It is not the point of faith.  It is something that is nice to think about, sure, but it is not the reason I have faith.  I have faith because I believe there is more to the world than what we can see and what we can prove.  I believe that there is something that makes one person different from another.  I believe that there is, in short, a soul. 

You cannot quantify or qualify a soul.  I can no more point to something and say that this is proof of a soul anymore than you could point to something and say it is proof of love.  I merely say that I see the effects of the soul.  I see how people do good and they do evil.  I see how people show great compassion and great cruelty.  I see how people have the capacity to do greatness and I think that what drives people to do all of that is something I cannot see.  I think that is what the soul is. 

So, faith is, in the simplest terms believing in something that cannot be proven.  It means believing in something that you cannot point to with certainty and say, here it is and this is what it is.  It means wearing a blindfold and standing over the swimming pool and believing that there will be water in there.  It means leaning back and falling and trusting that your friends will catch you.  It means believing in something that you cannot prove.  In short, it takes vast courage to have faith. 

Therefore, I say to you that faith is not weakness.  Faith is not a crutch.  Faith is not being unenlightened.  Faith takes more courage than can possible be imagined.  Not having faith is sticking your fingers in your ears and making noises so you don’t hear what is going on around you.  Not having faith is being defiant like a child and being afraid that there just might be forces that cannot be quantified and qualified might be at work.  Faith is jumping with your eyes closed and knowing that the best is yet to come despite what everyone else might be saying. 

So, here’s hoping we all have faith in this coming new year.  Here’s hoping we all have things to have faith in.  Here’s hoping we can all have faith in each other. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.