Modern Faith

It’s funny, really. These are the times you want to believe in fate and destiny. “It’s out of my hands” I want to think. During those long days where there is no reward in sight, you want to believe that you make your own fate. Captain of your own destiny. It gives you a feeling of control that you so desperately crave. More importantly, when you do get something great you want to think that you earned it or that you deserve it.
The fact is; we come to believe whatever we want to believe to make us feel better. The actions of the world and others that impact us, directly or indirectly, and we shape our paradigm to fit them and understand them. Faith therefore is not a belief or a viewpoint; faith is consistency.
Your beliefs aren’t a sum total of your knowledge, because naturally you fit your beliefs to cope with the world around you.

When you achieve something in your life, what is your gut reaction?


When something unfair and awful happens in your life, what is your gut reaction?



I am saying that the ability to have the same reaction to both events is called Faith.

In essence, faith can then be known in two forms. Faith is either used by the mind as a coping mechanism or a numbing agent to produce peace and civility during the worst of times, and then used as a tool to stay humble during the best of times. The opposite end would indicate that you are the end all, be all for the events around you. You are solely responsible for your personal victories, as you are equally responsible for your endless failures.

I am not in any way discussing the validity of any particular faith. An untrained mind would read the above and assume I am talking about say, Christianity versus Atheism. It’s far to complex for that.

I am speaking of the reaction, possibly chemical, in the mind to use faith as a coping mechanism when times are bad, and glorification of Freud’s “ego” concept during the best of times.

It more likely reflects the mind’s easy addiction to chemicals released (such as Dopamine) at both ends of the spectrum. In fact, to truly act out the extremes of either end of the spectrum indicate a conscious choice against our nature that desires to make the choice that makes us feel better about ourselves.

Faith, to me, is the ability to approach each event logically and with consistency. It is a passionate belief that all things around you have been designed to be as they are since the beginning of time, or the cold acceptance that each step you take is truly your own. Any other combination is a denial of reality.