The Inquisition: Faith

I've been thinking about my Inquiry for a few days now, and initially my idea was to begin at the foundation of morality. I do not want to begin straight off with the concept of God, as I think it's better to start from scratch and lead up to God - assuming things go in the direction, which, I'm sure they will. As I thought, however, I decided instead to begin with the topic of faith itself: what is it, who has it, and is that bad?

In the 2004 movie Shall We Dance, the main character John Clark, played by Richard Gere, finds himself rather unhappy with his life - not as a whole as he later explains, but with himself; he needs something new, so he decides to take up, of all things, ballroom dancing. He turns out to be rather amazing, but he's embarrassed to tell his family because he doesn't want his wife to feel inadequate: that she might think he's not happy with her, when in truth he loves his family more than anything. But his silence and peculiarity raises suspicion in the mind of his wife - Beverly "Bev" Clark, played by Susan Sarandon. Beverly, having found out a colleague's husband is having an affair, decides to hire a private-eye to spy on her husband and found out if it's just "potpourri in the pot." As the story progresses, Beverly finds out that her husbands secret life is really that of ballroom dancing and not an affair, and finds herself angry and embarrassed by the whole thing. "I know, it's stupid," she exclaims to her husband in a rather annoyed tone.

It's a great movie, so I recommend watching it, but it strikes me as interesting that the wife in the story feels bad for the assumption she made - that he was having an affair when it wasn't true. Now someone may say that she had every right to be suspicious, and ultimately the husband apologizes for his, though innocent enough, duplicitous acts. But be it as it may, she still feels guilty about it, and it is this guilt which interests me. Why did she feel guilty? Simply and in short, she felt she ought to have had more faith in her husband. Years of routine and she never felt a moment's suspicion, but after a stroke of peculiar behavior, she began to entertain thoughts as opposed the very character of her husband. She knew he wasn't the sort to do such a thing, but for a moment she removed his character from the evidence and, as is natural, thought, "If my friend's husband cheated on her, then why wouldn't mine!" She neglected the simple truth that her husband wasn't her friend's husband.

Now, I feel a bit strange bringing up an example of which I have no experience, and I'm certainly not saying that men and women ought never to suspect their spouses, for, as sad as it truly is, and the movie shows, some suspicions are true - marriages to crumble at the shameless hands of adultery. What's so interesting though is that the wife felt ashamed at her lack of faith in her husband; that she should have had more faith than the scenario had evidence; that the many years evidence of her husbands character ought to have outweighed a moment's peculiar evidence. But in human relationship, and thinking as a whole, there is this part of us that takes a step further than simply taking solace in safe assumptions of the repetitious: I have walked through my front door enough times to depend on it taking me to the front yard, and by this point it is so strong in my mind - a confidence of what to anticipate - that I no longer even anticipate it, for it has become a thing of faith. Perhaps one doesn't like the idea of faith in inanimate objects and circumstances (and frankly the faith isn't in the door, but reality), and such is why I first introduced the situation of John and Beverly Clark. Beverly knew, as the wife, friend and lover of her husband, that she ought to have had more trust in John than the total sum of daily circumstances. Time with her husband taught her that John was more than a series of actions; he was a person in whom she could have faith. If a person only ever takes others at their most immediate perceptions and is therefore one minute trusting them and the next highly suspicious, we say that this person has 'trust issues' - as though there were an issue there at all. If I may, I believe it would, perhaps, be more accurate to say they have 'faith issues' - as trust describes an immediate reliance on something: we trust our friends when they borrow things to return them intact, and I trust this chair to hold my weight. One dictionary defines faith as "belief that is not based on proof" (Random House Dictionary, Dictionary.com), but I think this is a poor definition (dare I say), and would add but one word to correct it: "belief that is not based on [immediate] proof". For Beverly to have faith in John wouldn't mean a sudden dismissal of proof, but not an utter reliance on temporally immediate proof. I walk in my room and fall back in my chair in faith that past evidence has taught me the sturdiness of my chair.

So now that faith has been defined in these terms, we can progress a step further: who has faith? I hope, by the terms described above, it becomes obvious that we all do. Yet I have heard it retorted in such circumstances that an atheist, exempli gratia, is not in need of faith - it is a belief that science is the end all, and it is therefore based on pure empirical evidence that the atheist lives. It is a sort of philosophy that says that only that which can be surmised from testing using the five forms of sensory is to be accepted. The point of tension with this philosophy is that the philosophy itself is not scientifically verifiable and must therefore fall victim to its own conclusion: it is to be unaccepted. Put in the form of a question, if all must be tested by an outside source, science, then how does one test science to check its validity? This isn't to say that science or life are illusions (as has been considered by scientists and Buddhist scholars), but rather than science itself is not the end all to life. Science is then no longer a god or power, but because a system and convention - an idea; a noun, and we therefore place our faith in it. Yes, even science requires faith, though we may despise the very idea. I'll give an example:

Atheism is derived from the Greek: alpha, the negative, and theos, God. The word, and corresponding philosophy, does not say 'I think there is no God', but bluntly declares 'negative God'; 'no God'; id est, there is no God. It is affirming a negative which, in basic logic, is impossible. One cannot affirm a negative in the absolute. That would be for me to say that in the whole of the universe there is no rock with purple spots and green stripes: the only way for me to know this would be to have infinite knowledge. So in order to say there is no being with infinite knowledge would require that person to have infinite knowledge. Now, my fellow Christians, don't get me wrong. I have not just proven a the existence of God; I merely proved that one cannot claim to know that there is no God. My point, much more softly, is simply that even the atheist requires faith to believe what they believe. But with only the evidence I've provided thus far they may still be right! For the faith of atheism is not built on nothing. As I described, faith requires one to accept what is beyond the immediate proof, and atheism has giants with a powerful background of science and logic which gives them a powerful case against the idea of a God. But for now let us be content that all humans have faith, and to be deprived is somehow viewed as an 'issue' which stunts a human's life.

To conclude, I shall simply state that no, there is nothing wrong with faith, and no, that doesn't not mean one with great faith is somehow intellectually deprived. Let us not, by these terms, confuse faith with foolishness. I believe what the Random House Dictionary described was foolishness, not faith, though it does go to show that in contemporary view those of faith have abandoned all such proof and are, therefore, fools. This is sad, and it saddens me when people preach Christianity as something to be blindly believed in. Christianity, as I believe and seek to reaffirm, is reasonable; I believe it is the most reasonable thing in the universe. Indeed it requires a sense of humility: one must be willing to admit that one does not, in fact, know everything, and in such moments it is faith (belief in non-immediate proof) which gives the Christian further strength. I will be careful what I say here just yet, but wish to add one last note as I begin my Inquiry: the purpose of this Inquiry is not to be the perfect apologetic. Indeed many, far more intelligent than I, have written and spoken on both sides of the matter, and in future essays I plan on reviewing more of these minds. But for now, I plan only to go so far as satisfies my own sense of curiosity, skepticism, reflection and wonder. This may, for some, be helpful and encouraging; it may, for others, simply not be enough or of an unhelpful sort. I'm glad for the first and sorry to the latter, and encourage both to consider the questions of life in ways they understand.