Where Do You Put Your Faith?
It has long seemed to me that having faith is one of those things you can’t NOT do. You know, like not wondering how everything came to be, for example. You can believe anything you like about it but you can never reach a point where you don’t have the curiosity.
Faith is that way too.
You can put your faith in there being some kind of god or in there being nothing at all or maybe some position between the two. But you can’t have no faith. That’s a position you cannot hold.
To find meaning in life, you must know the meaning of faith.
It’s like when kids tell you, when you enquire what they’re doing, that they’re doing nothing. We sort of know what they mean, (or at least what they’d like us elders to believe!), but technically it’s impossible to do nothing. There’ll be thinking, breathing and a host of activities going on, won’t there? There may be planning, hoping, dreaming and wishing happening not far below the surface.
Faith is of that ilk. You can say you don’t have faith in anything, but isn’t that actually the same as having faith in nothing?
If that’s your stance, wouldn’t you say, perhaps, “There’s no such thing as good luck?” Or maybe, “There’s no rhyme or reason to anything. It’s all random.”
On the other hand, if you are steeped in an orthodox religion you might say that events are all down to “God’s will.”
The meaning of faith is part of being human – like having a sex drive!
For my money, the most uncomfortable place to be is not knowing where to place your faith. As I’ve got older, it has increasingly seemed to me that having faith in something is preferable to just not having any at all.
Knowing the meaning of faith gives your life meaning too.
Pascal considered that it was better to believe in God than not on the grounds that if you didn’t believe and you turned out to be wrong, you’d be punished in damnation for all eternity.
For my money that doesn’t work too well because I don’t hold with living in fear and I don’t believe that whatever you choose to call the creative force that brought all of this into being has any desire for us to be fearful at all. Joyfulness and love seem to be the natural condition for all living things. Watch a newborn infant of any species for a few moments for all the evidence you’ll ever need on that one.
Perhaps there is no meaning of life. But there is fun to be had. There is wonder to be enjoyed. There are plenty of awesome things to inspire you. There is music to sing to, dances to dance and love to make.
Year after year, season after season, things unfold. This winter in Britain there have been floods. Last summer we had some gorgeous warm days to laze in the garden. People will be born, some will die.
Trying to understand any of that at a spiritual level is mostly futile. Even the scientific understanding we have of some of how this world and the rest of the universe works has proved only to lead to many more questions rather than provide answers.
(I recall my father, who was born in 1922, telling me that when he was at school it was still considered possible for a man to learn everything there was to know about science and that science itself had almost exhausted itself, answering as it had, every question there could ever be!)
I’m not a preacher. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to believe or to believe in. I am perhaps a proselytiser who likes to share the unfolding of wisdom as it appears to me. And I will certainly encourage people – perhaps you – to try different beliefs for size as I know from profound personal experience that changing beliefs can change your quality of life dramatically.
This article’s intent is to inspire you, if you are on the fence regarding what to believe about the invisible aspects of life and reality, to choose. Make a decision. Nail your colours to the mast.
If it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world if you change your mind later.
But choose. It’s the placing of faith somewhere that gives you peace. Because, like it or not, faith is something you were born with, as real as your sex drive, and it’s part of the human condition, so you have to put it somewhere.
