Faith

This past week has been very busy for me - things going every single day. I have been experiencing a lot more joy in my life, meeting new people, making new friends, and getting closer to God. My Baptism is now less than a week off, and lately my thoughts have been focused squarely on Faith.

Recent Sacrament and other Church talks have been about Faith, and I am glad of that. Some of those discussions served to tell me more of the Church's view on Faith, and some of them served to show me how other individual people felt about Faith. One individual that gave a talk last Sunday seemed to have had some very trying times in her life, and I have to say she was dealing with her current situation far better than I think I could, she was amazing.

When I was very young (in early grade school no less), I had a Sunday School teacher tell me something I haven't forgotten to this day (bear in mind, this was a Catholic teacher). She explained to us that we could live our lives however we wanted, do whatever we wanted, right or wrong, but if, in the end, at the VERY LAST MOMENT, we put our Faith in God, we would be saved. The various children in the classroom asked questions like "So if I was about to die in a car crash and I had Faith in God right before I was killed, I would be ok?" and the teacher answered "yes". I think she even quantified it something along the lines of saying out loud that you believe in Jesus Christ, and meaning it.

That discussion revolved around the whole idea of going to Heaven or Hell. At that point in my Catholic education, they hadn't really talked to us much about Purgatory yet. But I walked away with some very unhealthy thoughts. I figured none of the education or actions in my life mattered, so long as I expressed my Faith in God at the last moment, and I kindof focused on trying to "remember to have Faith" right at the end. For a short time, I was worried about whether I forgot, because (according to her lesson) I would end up going to Hell. But as time passed, I didn't even care about that so much. I mean, who ELSE in this world even cares about such things, other than those crazy religious zealots of the world?!?!?

Well, I'm concerned about the subject again these days. I don't know if that makes me a religious zealot or not, but I don't really care, I intend to continue thinking about this subject, and changing my actions and activities according to my beliefs.

So then, Faith. What is Faith, really? From where I sit, I think Faith is a many faceted thing, maybe even a path of varying levels of Faith. But to me, the ultimate end state of Faith is absolute, unwavering belief in where we came from, where we are, and where we are going.

Being truthful, I am confused about my current state of Faith.

First, I believe very much that it matters in this life what we do with ourselves, how we act, what we do, how we treat others. Along those lines, last night I remembered a scripture word for word from my youth - "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that, you do unto me" (Matthew 25:31-46). This was Jesus talking about how the way we treat others represents how we are treating him.

Second, I believe that our actions in this life affect what happens to us afterward. It makes sense to me that if you are a bad person or you treat people badly that you will end up reaping the rewards or punishments of those actions. There are times in my past where I have felt that death in this life only leads us to becoming dust - that there is nothing after.

I think that is the crux of my difficulty with Faith.

I have taken a great many courses on science and read even more. My brain seems wired more toward logic than to Faith. I try to figure things out for myself and have them make sense to me in ways I can understand TANGIBLY. And that is the whole thing about Faith - with Faith you can believe in things you haven't seen. You can believe in things you don't yet understand.

Albert Einstein said "I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice." - to me, even this person able to actually predict the mechanics of the Universe had a belief that there was a higher being. Albert Einstein was VERY critical of religion, and many countless quotes from him essentially belittle the concept of praying to a "supernatural being".

Einstein said "The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God.". For me, this is one of the problems I have had with religion over the years. It is easy for an atheist to understand the fear of what happens at death, for an atheist has no belief in anything other than the finality of death. Therefore, to picture belief in God forming out of a desire for guidance, love, and support makes sense to an atheist.

I have recently found myself in the odd position of having Faith in the right of how we should act in our lives, of the Truth of there being a life after this one, but a difficulty in believing in the life before this one.

Thinking it through though, this is what I have come to understand, and to believe:

1. We were spiritual beings in the life before this one, we had no bodies.
2. God offered us a chance at having a body, but he explained that if we were to accept the gift of a body, that we would forget much (all?) of what we knew.
3. We were born and live today, with bodies. We learn HOW to live with a body.
4. There are (as it says in the Bible) many temptations of the flesh. It is those very temptations that cause us to stray from the iron rod, from the straight and narrow path to salvation.
5. If, in the end, after "enduring to the end", we reach either the end of our life or the last day, and we have lived Righteously, then we will be saved.

So, with this in mind, I remember something else that I learned in my youth - something "taught" to me, but which I inexplicably VERY STRONGLY disagreed with.

Freud said that babies were born a "Tabula Rasa", or "Blank Slate" - that only the experiences of their environment shapes and forms who they become - that the experiences in their environment ultimately determine what decisions they make.

I absolutely have always believed this to be false. I have, from a very young age, always felt that we have a core being inside us, something that is who we "really" are. We have a moral compass inside us, something that knows right from wrong. We certainly IGNORE that compass from time to time, but it is there, and I believe that very strongly.

With my own two children I have seen things that boggle my intellectual (scientific?) mind - children know how to dance before ever having seen it. I -*VERY*- strongly believe this. Children know how to move to music and how to appreciate it before ever being taught. Babies can even sing (in their own words) to music before they have any form of language, or learned understanding of what singing even IS.

And then there is the absolutely UNIVERSAL fact that people everywhere in the entire world look as children as something different - something to protect, something deserving of more - something that is innocent and pure, and WORTH protecting.

So I find myself wondering if we enter this world a bit closer to our spiritual selves that we were before than people traditionally think about. If, over time, our environment and exposure to this world "taint" us to the point that we become less pure, less innocent, less deserving of "protecting". Bear in mind, I am not saying that "tainted" people are not worth protecting - I am just speaking to the general world view that seems to change as a baby becomes a small child and transitions into adulthood.

So this is a long way of saying that for me, at this time, I believe in God, but sadly, for me, that belief in God comes primarily from tangible things I have experienced in my own life. I picture a time when I believe in God wholly independent of any tangible experiences I have had in this life - that is the level of belief I am striving for. I think that so long as my belief is founded on the tangibility of things in this world, I run the risk of having that belief (that Faith) faltering when times get hard. This is something I need to work on, something I need to pray about, something I need to read about.

Faith is a gift. Faith is what lets us see the truth of the scripture instead of it being a collection of words. I believe that the more strong and complete your Faith is, the more complete your vision and knowledge and CERTAINTY of how you must act becomes.

So now, when I look at random people on the street, I have been reminding myself that they started their journey as a spirit walking with God just as I did. They may have had a harder life experience than I did. Their Faith may be less (or more!) than mine, but we are the same in the end - we are siblings of Jesus.