It’s interesting to me that people, in general, think faith is applicable to religious belief alone. Everyone has ardent and grand ideas about creation, afterlifes, and the mechanics of the universe we exist in. Atheists or materialists, whatever label you want to apply, seem to think a lack of faith in a greater omnipotent being means that don’t have faith. But the truth is they have placed faith that we as humans can explain existence and that there exists nothing beyond those direct observations. Believers in the God of their choice feel that faith was their bridge to knowing, but faith has been replaced by their experience. Believers stand, still, on the bridge that carried them to belief. Fact is, we all carry a faith with us, a belief in the unobjective possibilities that we fail to observe.
We believe in love. We believe in ourselves and our abilities to carry us to success. We believe that the world needs our help to save it. We believe that a future is bleak or bright. We believe that good will triumph over evil. We believe that reason will supersede chaos. We believe that the sun will rise each morning. We believe so many things. We don’t ever bother to look at the question of our faith in the day-to-day. The
things we count on, build on, dream on are all matters of faith.
We can plan, contrive and toil under the fantasy that we are building a better tomorrow, but the reality persists under it all. The illusion that we have the power to shape as we see fit is powered in the belief that our efforts create an inevitable outcome. It is a powerful belief, but something we must take on faith.
It’s been said that all we need is love, I would argue that before that we need faith. We are faith-based creatures no matter our beliefs, it’s an inevitable truth. We have to place our trust somewhere and hope for that trust to find reward in faith among the faithless.