Faith

The faith is a concept often attacked by intellectuals and overestimated by religious persons around the world. It is therefore convenient to try to understand more about it and to avoid, when we use it, that our faith is recounted like "blind faith."

According to the dictionary, faith is the reliable confidence in the truth, the validity or seriousness of a person, idea or thing. According to the Bible: It is, then, the faith the certainty of what is waited, the conviction of what is not seen (Hebrews 11:1).

In many situations we have no control, we cannot have control, of the future events, nevertheless we have to take decisions and act as if we knew what is going to happen. The majority of the people who flies in a plane do not know if each one of the elements that allow its correct functioning is in perfect condition, nevertheless they trusts, have faith, that the mechanical team of the air company realized correctly its maintenance task and acts consequently: doing plans on what it is going to do after a normal landing. Without faith, we would paralyze ourselves.

Now then, the faith is not a superstitious hope, the faith is a confidence derived from the truth, or at least, of our understanding of the truths that govern life, in the past, present, and future. In this sense, the faith is individual. Nobody can provide faith to other person, or transfer bottled faith.

Granted, truth is an evasive concept, especially when it is discussed what will happen in the future. As such, it is important to distinguish faith from presumption and from obstinacy. Let's suppose that the weather has been nice (sunny and without wind), but that the weather forecast speaks about a sudden change for the next day to rains and strong winds. Presumption would be to make plans for the next day based on how there has been the weather (sunny, without wind) in the previous days. If instead, we do plan for next day based on how we wish the climate to be, it would be obstinacy. In fact, if we like the snowfalls, we might acquire appropriate clothes, sleds, antifreezes, etc., without considering that it hasn’t snowed for years: obstinacy. On the other hand, faith is to trust that the meteorologists know what they are predicting based on the big number of accurate predictions in the past and to prepare wisely for the rains.

Faith is also to see what nobody else sees and to act consequently. All persons are different and each one visualizes the future in a particular way. Let's take as an example Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. He was an artist, not an inventor or neither a scientist, not even an engineer, but when he listened by chance to a conversation about electricity and electromagnetism, barely in development by then (this happened at the beginning of the XIXth century), he visualized a way of distance communication based on the above mentioned concepts. And even more, confident that it would work, he left his painter's career and dedicated his life to develop his idea. He endured many rejections and 12 years pass by before the American Congress accepted to tend a telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. The result: a way of communication that improved the world. This "vision" beyond the senses, is faith.

The faith is not "a blind jump in the darkness" as Soren Kierkegaard said at the beginning of the XIXth century and whose phrase was simplified later to "faith is blind." The real faith is based on something sure. There are those who say that faith in God is blind, but actually there is so many evidence that points out to the existence of a Creator, that the real blindness would be to have no faith in God. As well as the reason endorses the faith in God, it must endorse any person, work or idea in which we place our faith. It was the scientist Blaise Pascal who said: "The faith says to us with accuracy what the senses do not say, but it doesn’t contradict what the senses see; it is above them, not against them."

It is because the faith that we can trust the future. A study on stress and anxiety carried out by the University of Pennsylvania revealed that 15 per cent of the Americans spend more than half of their time (not counting sleep hours) worrying, either for health, finances, family issues, job security, violence, or relationships. Although a small dose of stress is healthy, we must counter the excess with a good endowment of faith.

Finally, faith must be reflected in our character. The confidence in God, in our family, in our coworkers, will allow us to concentrate on our own responsibilities without worrying excessively on issues out of our control, even if at one particular moment the results are adverse. We must always remember that a good character, with his dose of faith included, produces fruits in due time. And of course we must never forget the source of faith: So faith is by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17).