February 7, 2005
-
What is faith, and why must we have it? All religions, whether it
be Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism have faith in some sort of
afterlife, even if that “afterlife” means being reincarnated. All
believe that their religion is the “true” religion, and while some say
you can believe other religions, most are pretty exclusive. By
nature, man wants to believe in something higher than himself that
gives him reason for being here, and this usually means believing in
some sort of God that cares for them. Man will cling to this
desperately, despite any evidence to the contrary, and understandably
so, as he loses his reason for being if this fundamental belief is
destroyed. Man also is inherently stubborn, always having to be
right, no matter what, and this plays into religion.Therefore, can we tell what religion, if any, is “right”? All
religions believe that they are the right one, including Christianity,
yet all of them will say they are unique. While some followers of
every religion are inclusive, the religion itself is exclusive.
Islam teaches its followers to wage war against the infidels, the
enemies of Islam, which is basically people of different beliefs.
Christianity has John 14:6, which tells us that Jesus is the only way
to eternal life. Hinduism has differing levels of kharma, and as
you gain more kharma you are reincarnated as a higher being, basically
meaning that you must eventually be a devout follower of Hinduism in
order to attain the highest kharma. Since all of them believe
they are the right one, yet they do not agree on theology, all of them
cannot theologically be the right one. On the other hand, just
because all of them say they are the right one doesn’t mean that any
one of them is the right one. The first question we have to ask
is does theology even matter? Perhaps the important thing is just
to have something to believe in, and it doesn’t matter if it is the
right belief system or not. But if theology is important, how do
we know which one to choose? Do we just pick one at random, and
hope it is right? That hardly seems logical. Do we go with
our gut instinct? Instincts are wrong all the time. Do we
go with what is popular? A bandwagon philosophy for religion also
hardly seems logical. Or do we just stick to what we have been
raised on our entire life, just ignoring any evidence which might
suggest something else, and blindly follow something that we may not
really believe?That brings up another question. Christianity says you must have
“faith like a child,” or “blind faith,” where you just trust in
something without any reasoning for doing so. This is a
LIE. You cannot trust in anything without having reason for doing
so. There is that ridiculous chair analogy, where I sit down in a
chair and I “have faith” that it will hold me up. True, the chair
might not hold me up, but I can be pretty sure that it will because I
can use logic to determine that it has been built with the proper
specifications to support my weight. I can also use past
experiences sitting in chairs, and watching other people sit in chairs,
to know that the chair will hold me up. So I hardly have “blind
faith” that the chair will hold me up. I do have reasoning,
whatever that reasoning might be.Therefore, it has to be the same for religion. You cannot just
blindly believe something without having some sort of reasoning, be it
logical or not, for doing so. For me, as a logical thinker, it
has to be a logical reason, but for someone who thinks differently from
me, it may not have to be a logical reason. Perhaps for somebody
else, even “blind faith” is enough. Of course, in order to
believe in a religion, I would first have to find a logical reason to
even need religion. Yes, religion gives you something to believe
in and something to live for, but it is based totally on something
somebody has told you that you cannot see for yourself. That
person is basing their belief on what somebody told them, and that
somebody is basing their belief on what somebody told them. It is
just so commonplace now that people don’t even realize the oral
tradition involved.Just think about Santa Claus. Your parents told you (well, my
parents didn’t) that Santa Claus is real, and that he comes on the
night of Christmas Eve and gives you presents. For many years you
believed this, because you would wake up on Christmas morning and there
would be presents under the tree. Perhaps you saw Santa at the
mall, or maybe you left out milk and cookies and they were
consumed. Eventually, something happened, and you came to the
conclusion that there was a perfectly logical explanation, and it was
NOT Santa Claus. Does anybody else besides me see the STRIKING
resemblance between Santa Claus and God? Somebody told you that
God is real, though you cannot see Him. You believed it to be
true because you “felt him working in your life”, or you saw some
“miracle” or something. Maybe, like me, you were raised believing
this your entire life, and everything had something to do with
God. I am beginning to realize that “Santa”, at least in the way
I have been raised to believe, does not exist. There will be no
“presents under the tree on Christmas morning.” The only
difference between Christianity and Santa is that you are allowed to
grow out of Santa. You cannot “grow out” of God, at least not
without receiving overwhelming persecution and criticism from the
Church.The whole thing is seeming more and more ridiculous to me, and the more
I vocalize my feelings, the more my life and the lives of those around
me are destroyed. But I am beginning to care less and less about
what people think, and more about finding what is true. If
something isn’t true, then no matter how important it is, no matter how
hard it is to let it go, and even no matter who it might hurt by
letting it go, it is just a waste of time to cling to it.
Comments (5)
I’d recommend you read either Marcus Borg or John Shelby Spong. I tend to prefer Borg’s style of writing myself. . . both are Christians in the Jesus Seminar (and therefore considered non-Christians by many). I recommend them because a lot of what you are saying sounds similiar to things I’ve read from them. Whether or not you agree with anything they say (I can’t say I come close to completely agreeing with either), their stories of intellectualism and faith are interesting reads and help lead to questions, if not answers.
My thoughts on the “right” religion question — are we really all that different? Judaism, Christianity and Islam are based on the same tradition. A lot of other world religions seem to share the same overarching characteristics with different names, etc. Perhaps we are all right — and all wrong simotaneously. Perhaps the search for truth is what really matters. After all, “seek and you shall find.”
I’m not as universalist as I sound in the above paragraph. But I know enough to realize I don’t know everything — and I’ve been proven wrong often. I also know I have much to learn from my Jewish and Muslim friends.
The search for truth is what really matters. Keep seeking George, you’ll find it. It’ll be a hard, long, even lonely journey, but the quest for truth is the noblest quest.
After all, great answers are only found by asking great questions.
My friend Kristen once wrote:
“We want there to be some great power we have faith in, we want lots of love in our lives, and we need to hope for these things in order to remain human, but what if someone erased these words from our minds, and we didn’t have a way to describe such feelings? Would we still want them? And if we didn’t want them, would we try to fill the void with a wanting of something else? It seems to me, that these particular concepts do nothing to lessen our wanting of material things, in fact, they almost seem to makes us want more. The more love we have, the more stuff we need to prove that love is real, like big diamond rings and flowers and other pointless things. Same with faith. The more faith we have in a god or deity, the more churches we need to prove it exists, the more bibles we need to spread the word, the more ”I Brake for Jesus” bumper stickers we need for our cars, the more tiny Buddha statues we need for our desks. Well. I suppose this is the fate of humanity. To always want more out of things that should be simple and acceptable in their most pure forms. Love is love, no matter how big the ring is. Faith is faith, no matter how many Bibles you own.”
Just thought it might help.
Love, Sis
I too am on a similar journey man…Seek after truth…for it is the only thing to set us free
Hi George,
I have a simple thought to suggest concerning one of your statements:
I does seem like we have been called to faith like a child; it’s clearly written in scripture, but I don’t think blind faith. I think many people have misunderstood the purpose of ‘faith like a child’ in these times. I believe one of the main issues concerning the Christian faith is the loss of control. To have faith like a child is to believe what we are told by the people we trust. That’s why Lucifer is so dangerous. Remember the Garden of Eden…’who told you that you were naked?’ God was sad by their choice to gain knowledge from any other source than him. I realize it sounds selfish but I cannot escape one simple truth: I can’t handle knowledge of good and evil. Think about the tendency you have, I have; when man discovers a line or limit within God’s law, he does everything he can to get close to the the line and not cross it. So it is with all of us. The purpose of childlike faith is all about trust. We don’t have bad reasons to trust, and we certainly know better than trying to live a certain morality based on our understanding of God’s Law…we can’t do it, we won’t be righteous because of it, and we will end up tired of our faith, condemned, frustrated, and needing something different.
This is when the real Gospel starts to work. You suddenly realize it is not an ideal lifestyle with ideal morality and rules, it’s a process of conformity to your ultimate a identity; blameless, spotless, and beautiful. Childlike faith is truly one of our most compelling gifts. All faiths seem to require you to understand the difference between Good and Evil, and based on your knowledge of those things, you have to decide what to do. Your actions will finally detirmine your destination. In Christianity, the fundamental problem of mankind is knowledge. We aren’t supposed to work for our salvation till we deserve it, we recognize that trying to work from our understanding of Good and Evil is where our problem starts. Think: Adam and Eve (assuming the story is true) were perfect, and they couldn’t handle the knowledge of Good and Evil; what makes us think we can now?
Most faiths have a concept of Holiness. All cultures have a certain understanding of good and evil. Almost all religions have the idea of God; and Budhism just offers you nothing at all…really. This is by far the most basic plea for my faith that I can make, aside from all words and reasoning; the main issue is so obvious we tend to miss it. With Christ, you get one shot on Earth to choose your destiney, you are told that you can’t do it on your own, failure is a certainty; not even Christians will be perfect. –but Christianity does not concern itself with perfection because it has two things that you will notice other faiths do not. Grace, and a God that actually love his creation enough to redeem it with His own life.
I can’t argue science well enough, but I know my history pretty well; this Christianity thing is the biggest thing to ever hit planet Earth. It would be a damn shame to loose sight of what it really is because it gets legalized by people in authority that have forgotten what they are talking about. You don’t have to check your brains at the door either.
Michael