F day

[jchrisobrien]

I'm starting a new tradition, where I pick a word starting with F and talk about it on Fridays. Last week I chose flirt. This week's contestant? Faith.
read on...
I look at faith mostly in a religious sense: faith in God, faith in your religion of choice. A lot of people talked about their faith and beliefs in a series of posts recently. Common among them was a rejection of organized religion for a more free form, personalized spirituality. The details of such a belief were pretty vague and far between. This seems to fly in the face of reason to me. I have a hard time accepting a religion or belief system without rules or rituals. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism. All of the major world religions have a belief structure, hierarchy of sorts, a mythology. They are a spiritual discipline, through which you can achieve a relationship with God. Modern spiritualism seeks to cut that all away in favor of a personal relationship unclouded by rules or dogma. But it sounds like a cop out to me, no offense. Faith isn't easy, its hard. It's painful at times. It's accepting that sometimes bad things happen to good people. That your grandfather gets killed in a car crash and a serial rapist walks free. That you aren't at the center of the universe, that things will happen that you can't understand and you can't hold anyone accountable for it. People have wrestled with concepts of good and evil, God or no God, from the beginning of time, and will still be debating it when the universe ends. No answers will be coming. Nothing that doesn't require you to make a leap beyond logic at some point. Nothing that doesn't require faith in the end to solve.

All that being said, I think my faith is pretty eroded these days. Too much time away from the Church, perhaps. Too much time not thinking about it. Too much time considering every side of the issue, and then getting paralyzed while I sit on the fence. Impaled on it, in the end. The realization that your religion may be nothing more real than the stories of Zeus or Ra. I hit me the most when I started doubting the existence of an afterlife. That sudden sinking feeling that there would be no reward for living a good life in the end, for enduring the trials and tribulations and injustices we face every day. And oddly, there would be no punishment for my crimes, if I chose to commit them. I could do whatever I wanted, and only be accountable to natural and federal law.

It crushed me. Because if good and evil and morals are all just fabrications, then why follow any one over the other? Why follow them at all? We would just be living a lie, pretending to be something other than what we are: animals. Beasts.

But I guess I don't really think that. Because somewhere in my core is still the belief, drilled in by many years of church and catholic school, and later process and accepted by myself, in the hope of something better. That something is out there, that we can draw strength from, or comfort. And even if it isn't there, our belief, our faith, can make it so. You can will God into existence... or out of it.

All right, this is starting to sound like a Mage game discussion, so I'm ending it here.

Comments

[ayun.livejournal.com]

And I thought this was going to be a tribute to the Buffy character!

(I just watched the body-switch episodes the other night...)

[eeyrg.livejournal.com]

me too! (the Faith, chick thing...)

Dopplegangerland?

Re:

[silas7.livejournal.com]

I worked really hard to resist commenting about her. She will get her own entry when I tackle: Fantasy. :)

That was a rather cool episode, I thought. And it really gets good when it continued on in Angel...

[eeyrg.livejournal.com]

oh hey, now I gotta watch ALL of Angel just to see the goodness that's eluded to.
*sigh*

[ayun.livejournal.com]

I was genuinely impressed with the acting by both girls - it's a total bravura acting thing to do the personality-swith (like in Face/Off) but it always gives me a charge.

And you'll be feeding me Angel episodes when I'm done with Buffy, won't you? :)

Re:

[silas7.livejournal.com]

To deny you at the height of your addiction would be cruel and unusual...

you know....

[xenoglaux]

I didn't even realize you where religious until I saw your post about lent.

Re: you know....

[silas7.livejournal.com]

I'm Catholic. Lapsed. Don't go to chuch anymore, haven't read the Bible in a while, but went through a lot of Catholic school, and asked a lot of questions. And there was a priest I knew who I talked with about things a lot.

It's why I occasionally get twitchy when I see Christian bashing go on on list. I know it's not directed at me, that the people getting bashed most often deserve it... but the sweeping generalizations irk me.

Re: you know....

[loxocele.livejournal.com]

hmmm...that's really interesting.

somehow, when i think of the idea of religion coming up, adn someone becoming uncomfortable, i usually think of it being the other way around - with the non-religious person as the one secretly squirming.

this is probably because that person is me, and since all the squirming is secret you never realize it's going on on the other side as well.

this actually came up in my playwriting class today. while i'm sure there are people of various religions in all sorts of my classes, it seems the poetry- and play-writing classes in particular draw people who really, really like to talk about christianity. while i understand that religion can play a major part in people's lives, it starts to disturb me when these kids show up and everything they write involves the judeo-christian god, or jesus, or a church, or the same tired and over-used "christian themes" that showed up in all the stories they read LittleMe in sunday school...i start wondering why there's nothing else in their lives that's worth writing about. the whole topic makes me a little uncomfortable, mostly because i don't know how to respond or relate to it. it's something not only outside my life and experience, but something i don't even want to be a part of. unlike other cultural differences (which i tend to find really interesting and like talking about), the religion one is one i just like to avoid...i think it's mostly the condemnation and threat-of-conversion-attempts. i mean, i've certainly never been told that i have to, say, become Asian or face eternal damnation :P

Re: you know....

[silas7.livejournal.com]

It all depends on the circumstance. If the religious people are in the majority, the non-religious grow squeamish. When a group of individual spiritualists and generally non-(organized) religious folks talk about Christianity negativly, the Christians get nervous. It all depends on who the minority is at the time. ;)

It just saddens me to hear people debase Christianity. Not that they don't have good reasons all the time, but it's easy to forget that not everyone who follows a given faith follows it lock, stock, and barrel. Does it make me a bad Christian for now following the Church on everything? I don't think so. Jesus was a Jew, who was disgusted with what the Jewish faith had become (or so it is written). So I think there is room for a Christian who follows what he believes to be right, but not what the hierarchy says is. That being said, people have a right to air their complaints, and if the comments aren't directed at me, I shouldn't let them affect me. After all, I'm not an asshole. :)
It is interesting that even in groups of tolerant, "open minded" people, we still mock and revile other groups (Republicans, Catholics, etc). If we were really open minded, wouldn't we allow everyone their say?

[atalanta.livejournal.com]

The realization that your religion may be nothing more real than the stories of Zeus or Ra. I hit me the most when I started doubting the existence of an afterlife. That sudden sinking feeling that there would be no reward for living a good life in the end, for enduring the trials and tribulations and injustices we face every day. And oddly, there would be no punishment for my crimes, if I chose to commit them. I could do whatever I wanted, and only be accountable to natural and federal law.

I know you're talking about specifically *divine* reward or punishment here. But you seem to be saying that there's no other source of punishment or reward besides what you've mentioned here, and I don't believe that's true. I'm not just talking about your effect on the world and the people around you, but personal rewards and punishments that *you yourself* accrue. Because you're shaped, quite literally, by every thing you do, every thought you think, and every experience to which you expose yourself, your choices do matter. They *make* you. They change your mind every day and construct the person you turn out to be as you go through life. That seems to me like a pretty good payoff ... make better choices and end up being the person you want to be.

But ... if you want there to be some form of ultimate reckoning for the random and senseless bad things that do happen, well, I guess you're not going to get that without a God.

That was very earnest, wasn't it? Damn. Well, maybe this only appeals to me because I never have believed in God so I never had a belief in the afterlife in the first place. I don't know how appealing this is as a replacement for divine vengeance :)

[silas7.livejournal.com]

But what if your idea of a better person involves doing things that hurt others? If I assume there is no God, no afterlife, and no divine reward system, I could conclude that this life is the only one I will have, and I should wring all the pleasure out of it that I can. I could assume that my rights and pleasure is paramount above all others, and that everyone should assume that. I could thereby do whatever I felt was justified in my best interest. Lying, cheating, murder, or worse. Now to prevent my self from being a complete sociopath, I could adopt a code that acknowledges kindred spirits, friends, and make them exempt from that treatment.
When there is not absolute in place, like a religious doctrine, I fear that base instinct will take over in the end. Now you could come up with a philosophical system that mimics a religion but without the God part: doing good actions, which reflect well upon you, and cause others to recognize you as a good person, being its own reward system. But then, is it not similar to a religion?
I think religion has been twisted by hierarchy and tradition to be a form of goverment as well as belief system, legislature and theocracy in one. And that is what most people object to. Then there are those who don't see the need for a God figure, and philosophy and reason can take that place.

Hmm... I think I'm losing my focus here.

[jasonlizard.livejournal.com]

when talking about words, the first thing i'll always do is gravitate to a dictionary.

faith
n.
1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief. See Synonyms at trust.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
often Faith Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
4. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
5. A set of principles or beliefs.

Idiom: in faith Indeed; truly.


i like 1. and 2. if you just string them together, you get my ideal definition. which, in my opinion, is also why often, oh so very often, it's very difficult to, "keep the faith." and why "tests of faith" are such trials. because in the end, there's nothing to stand by but yourself. and that can be a very lonely place.

let's say good and evil are constructs. justice may be highly variable, so let's rule that out too. we could be just beasts. and in that, what harm would we do? possibly much less than we do now. the beasts have managed to roam the earth in their own sense of balance for far longer than we have. we manage to outgrow ourselves. we're too clever and too short-sighted. we're also as ignorant as the beasts and perhaps some day we'll be undone by products of our own ingenuity. all the while we think we're doing good. i sound like i'm rambling but really, there's a balance in the average. there must be or you're just kidding yourself. what side of the line you stand on day to day doesen't matter much unless you're impacting the average. do you create things or destroy them? and what must be destroyed for your creation to exist?

in the end i think it all comes down to what do you do to get by on a day to day basis. and if you're doing something that makes it more difficult to get by tomorrow, then are you really doing anyone a favor? maybe if you push that to extremes you get good and evil. if you standardize it maybe you get behavioral control. if you put supernatural punishment or reward behind it maybe you get religion. i don't know but i just try to make it easier for everyone, myself included, to have a better tomorrow and still make it through today. is that a matter of faith? nature? does it even matter?

I also checked the dictionary first. :)

[silas7.livejournal.com]

I agree that faith is hard, be it faith in others or in yourself. I think culturally we don't have a system that supports or encouranges faith. Science demands explinations or proof for belief, and if you can't produce it, it doesn't count. If you can't prove that someone is innocent or guilty, you have to make a decision based on their character, or what's know of it.

It sounds like humans are out of touch with their environment. Beasts do as much as they need to to meet their needs, and don't act excessivly. In that way, they don't deplete their food supply or cause themselves to be extinct. Humans don't have that same safeguard.

out of touch, out of time

[jasonlizard.livejournal.com]

so what's wrong with the facts? to me, it's much better to let someone go if the data can't be shown to incriminate them than to apply faith for the extrapolation of their character or mob rule. would you rather someone walk or be sentenced because of the reading of the entrails of a quail because that's what their particular faith says is supposed to happen and they believe that decree? it's silly. but we're a silly species. yes, we're out of touch. according to some theories of antropology, we've always been out of touch. they believe that we hunted the large mammels (mastadons, saber-toothed tiger, etc.) to extinction.

i think you are giving beasts more credit. it's not that they don't deplete their food supply, it's more that we care less after they have and their population dwindles. ours may do the same some day. nature seeks to adjust. we don't like nature and we employ a host of measures to better nature. if we were more in touch with our environment, we'd understand that. i think that has as much to do with faith as it does with science. the faith of the american indians was very in touch with nature but there are many other faiths that have lost that touch. equivilantly, science can work with nature or directly against it depending on how you do your science. free will is a real complication sometimes.

I know that phrase... which song is it from...

[silas7.livejournal.com]

I agree that facts are good, especially in our judiciary system. I just meant to illustrate that today, facts and data are more valued in this day and age than in the past. For the most part, I think this is a good thing. I think that as a result of that though, faith is more difficult to hold onto today.

Interesting about hunting mammals to extinction. If we were that way thousands of years ago, can we expect to be any different now, or ever? Granted we've changed a lot since then, but some things don't seem to change from era to era.

Mankind seeks to put itself above nature, and forgets that it is a part of it. IT doesn't mean we have to throw away our computers and live in deerskin teepee's, it just means we have to think about the consequence of our actions more.

But that would imply responsibility, which we humans hate. Grr.

[damiel.livejournal.com]

This seems to fly in the face of reason to me.

Not unlike faith, actually.

I'm looking forward to next Friday and having faith you will choose my favorite.topic.ever for dicussion.

(Food, you perverts!)

Re:

[silas7.livejournal.com]

Indeed, it is much like faith.

I have a nice list of topics for fridays... and now food is one of them!