TOW: Faith

Faith. 

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of faith as a concept.  It's not something that people talk about much these days.  You don't often hear the term 'have faith in me' or ' I will always be faithful.'  Faith in people, ideas, or concepts is lost on this generation, and perhaps on this particular era's agnostic milieu.  Faith is a dying concept for people of my generation.  And it continues to bear less importance in daily Western culture as reason, and science, continue to showcase interesting things to consumers of culture.  But what does faith mean in a moral sense?

 To me, faith is an important aspect of moral life.  No good can be done without faith.  Good actions can only happen when we do more than assume, when we see something so clearly in our hearts that we wish to make real, that we bring forth an idea, a feeling, a desire into action.  Faith can show the strength of our resolve.  Love is weak-will when one does not have faith.  Hope is meaningless if there is no strength of action that can see hope through a dark storm.  In many ways, faith is an intention as much as a belief:  a belief, or perhaps even a desire for the good to be done in the world as it should be.  And to believe in things that cannot be seen, except by our hearts and minds.

 In a religious sense, faith, hope, and love form the start of all Christian beliefs.  Nothing can be done without these three standing together. 

And one of the problems of modernity is being too hung up in deliverables, practicals, and small details.  Faith was something that built cathedrals of old, inspired art that went on for hundreds, or thousands of years.  Faith moved mountains.  And those who had faith were much richer for it.

Today, I think about the value and role of faith in my own life.  It is interesting to see how faith has become less important as I become older, and the need to 'validate' becoming ever more important.  I hpe one day I can return to those eyes I had, that gave me all I needed to succeed, by believing what I was doing was going to create good in my life, and in the lives of those around me.  Because faith, like St. Augustine says, 'is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.'

I want, one day, to be able to say I did that.