Faith is a creative force. The teacher brings out the best in the student by his confidence in the student’s ability and desire to learn. The long distance runner goes the extra mile, in large part, by pumping up his self confidence, or his faith in himself. The parent’s values are accepted by the faith that the parent has, that the child will act in accordance with those values. When the child errs and the parental confidence remains, it is a powerful attraction to “live up to the parent’s expectations.†Faith is the most important aspect of a committed relationship. How could two people remain together if they did not trust and believe in each other? Faith in ourselves gives us confidence to grow. Faith in others is a much more powerful persuader than a dictionary full of words.
But our faith in ourselves tends to be limited, and so its creative power is limited. Our faith in others has its limits so we can help them improve only insofar as our confidence in them allows. The way to supercharge the creative ability of faith is to have faith in God. This removes all limits and allows us to be totally confident, even when a situation seems totally impossible to us. So the hopeless addict feels that he can recover because an omnipotent God won’t let him fail. The stroke victim regains use of paralyzed muscles. Alone, a person might lose hope, but with faith in the help of the omnipotent, there comes faith in oneself to overcome any hardship. Thus with faith in God, we can push out the boundaries of our life’s positive realities. We can enjoy more, we can endure more, and we can overcome more. Faith helps us live a more full and satisfying life. Why would we need any more of a reason than this to believe in God?
In the case of the long distance runner, I agree that faith can be a powerful force. When attempting any type of task that requires skill, adopting the belief that one will succeed is probably a good idea, regardless of the actual probability that one will succeed. For completely natural psychological reasons, it is quite possible that believing that one will succeed will increase the probability of success. I would be very interested in seeing any statistical evidence of this.
However, that believing a proposition brings good results does not imply that the proposition is true. There are plenty of things that would make me very happy to believe, but there is a time for winning sports and a time for looking at the world realistically. A person would not be happy if they tried jumping over the Grand Canyon because they believed an omnipotent God would help them. I would also hate to waste a good portion of my life worshiping a being that doesn’t exist. Overall, I don’t think the advantages of blindly accepting a set of propositions could ever outweigh the costs. I would rather live a slightly less happy life than give up reason. Also, I am not completely sure that faith would lead to a better world. The terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center probably took comfort in the idea that they would soon be in paradise.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I agree that jumping the grand canyon would not be a good application of faith. Perhaps its a matter of degree. Jesus even joked “If you had the faith of a mustard seed you could say to this mountain, throw yourself into the sea, and it would”. I think that even we lifelong professed Christians have only a very weak faith…yet it is worth a lifetime of nurturing and adding kindling to the little flame, so to speak. Notwithstanding eternal life, we only go around this way once, so we should get the maximum living that we can out of each second. If faith in God helps me do that, I’m in!
You would forgo the probable benefit for the perceived cost? What do you see as the cost of belief in God? For me, it costs some time contemplating the world around me and myself. But I really enjoy doing that. Isn’t it fantastic to step back from the rat race sometimes and spend some quality time with yourself?