Watching a television interviewer refer to his program as having a ‘faith-based’ perspective made me think about what it is I separate from ‘faith.’ Of course, he was referring to the idea that his religion required a certain amount of faith…I guess because the object of his faith was keeping hidden. According to the television, keeping stuff hidden was meant to test that faith, with certain rewards or punishments meted out for doing or not doing so.
I’m going to sound a bit like that TV guy here…and I noticed a few things.
In examining this model, it is obvious that most of us are faith-based in most areas of our lives. There is a Federal budget being presented in the Canadian Parliament on Tuesday. Other Parliamentary Parties are being asked to have some kind of faith that it would be good for the country, based on many world-wide financial unknowns. I guess you could call some of this, ‘hidden’ information.
I remember many years ago in University, discussing the ink-blot as used in testing of psychological issues. It was like there were some kind of answers hidden in the blot, and the client would speak of what he saw there. Then an analyst would explain or utilize that information in sessions or medication. The client, or someone in authority, would have ‘faith’ that this analyst knew what he was saying, since it was all hidden from common view.
I have lost several family members and friends to cancer and serious illnesses. They had ‘faith’ that the procedures and medicines would help them. Along with the medical side, they used their ‘faith’ to trust that they would be healed by divine intervention, by assisting the medicine to work or to heal outright. It didn’t, so this meant that there were hidden reasons for the failures and we just needed to have faith.
Of course, this means having faith in the pharmacological industry because they need research money.
We could then include genetics, biochemistry, eugenics, and other fields of science, biology, and the like…..all searching for those illusive hidden answers. We are asked to have faith in their efforts and give them our tax dollars.
We must also include here the much aligned field of Law, with lawyers making pronouncements and writing documents that we have no choice but to have faith in, even though a large percent of the population has concerns about the profession itself.
It is interesting that in the past, lawyers were actually considered to be part of the healing community. Are they still?
Getting back to that television program, the conversation touched on the issues of ‘creationism’ and ‘evolution’. (don’t they always?) and whether educational systems should get tax dollars for both or one.
When adding up the many fields of science, humanities, pharma and medicine, along with the increasing size of the book on human mental illnesses……all attempting to get tax dollars for their ‘faith-based’ perspectives, it is no wonder our economy is starting to have its back broken under the weight of it all.
Now, having said all this, what’s my point, if any?
There seems to have been a time when we lost being a full participant in life. We have become nothing more than second-hand humans, experiencing very little without the input of every ‘believe in me’ device and advice that we have somehow supported financially, whether we know it or not.
But it is the conversation about being second-hand that really matters.
We are a faith-based society, always inviting interference into our experience of life. Getting ourselves back to a first-hand experience, by being true to ourselves, may be exactly what the world community needs right now. The conditions may be presenting themselves whereby we take a deep breath and set some real priorities. They may require a new look at what we place our ‘faith’ in. This may be our chance to grab a new foothold on life….a life we love….a life that matters!
Rich