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...)

you know....

[xenoglaux]

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

[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 :)

[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?

[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!)