Guest Spot: Gentle Reader MV
Gotta have faith
Gentle Reader MV wants to know:
Despite George Michael's raging endorsement, what do the gentle readers think about faith?
- Faith is a way of finding coherence in and giving meaning ti the multiple forces and relations that make up our lives.
- Faith is a person's way of seeing him- or herself in relation to others against a background of shared meaning and purpose.
- Faith is imagination, as it composes a felt image of an ultimate environment.
That what James Fowler says about faith. Gentle readers, do you agree with this, in part or in full? Would you change part of this definition or scrap it entirely? How would you define faith?
5 comments:
i don't have any major issues with Fowler's definitions, but i would say the first bullet point is when one uses "faith" as synonymous to "religion" and/or "philosophy;" and that the second and third points seem very similar to "culture" and "worldview."
i guess at its very basic level, faith is what one has when they believe in something that can't necessarily be proven.
I concur. I have faith that Baby G will continue to love me and put up with me for many years into the future. I have no way of proving that, nor is it a spiritual thing, but I trust her. So, perhaps faith = trust?
Therefore, religious faith is trust in God, goddess or gods, and I have to decide with my free will whether or not to believe. Well, that's what they taught me in Catholic School (not the 'goddess or gods' part); however, they sure did spend a lot of time teaching me not to trust myself, especially around boys.
I think this is where my frustration with religion enters the scene: I've studied many of the world's religions, even going so far to get a bachelor's degree, but I've not come across one yet that provides for faith/trust in humanity. I guess that's where Secular Humanism comes into play, but it's not "warm and fuzzy" the way some religions can be.
Wow, i'm rambling here.
I guess what I'm trying to articulate is that my existential angst has not been soothed by religious faith. A nice shiraz helps for a little while...
I say to scrap it, not just because Fowler's use of $5 dollar words renders his definitions of faith accessible only to theologians and philosophers, but because my faith in humanity insists that something as personal as faith cannot be generalized into bullet points.
As far as my personal faith. My faith in humanity, though always a struggle, is in essence, hope. My faith in god, when pressed about it, is that there is an afterlife and whatever form it takes is influenced by this life. Hell is most definitely real, but it is here on earth, not some lake of fire in some nether region. Eliminate all the hells of the earth and this life as well as the afterlife will become paradise.
-D
But can this definition be read in a way that doesn't imply any religious connections/affilations? Could this definition include the benefits of secular humanism? (Just maybe not nihilism)
I assume the above anonymous is MV, the T-I-R. Yes, I think Fowler's definition can be read in a way that doesn't tie it down to any particular belief. It does seem to be inclusive of secular humanists, and beliefs that do not include personal gods/godesses.
Just talking about terms and definitions alone, though--look, you made me think about it, so now I find I have issues with it--I can't distinguish what he's calling "faith" as opposed to "belief," "religion," "philosophy," or "worldview (i.e., culture)." I think it's because he means faith, on a macro-level, if you will, and maybe it's really hard to pin that down. Seems that faith, on smaller levels (but not necessarily less significant), would be like the trust that Tiny Robot speaks of, that everyone but nihilists have for at least some of their fellow humans.
The thing is, I don't think that it's as likely for those outside of the Abrahamic religions, and the beliefs that grew out of it, to use the word "faith" the same way Fowler does, even if he does mean to include them--especially secular humanists, because it's a word that has come to have implications of non-thinking. Too many people like Jerry Falwell throw it around with much less thought than Fowler has put into it.
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