Faith
by Sam Stragand
Throughout life, as humans, we make many decisions that will effect our lives, directly or indirectly, in some way, great or small. When these decisions confront us with their conflicting facts, we usually must decide which facts or people to have faith in. Many of the more important decisions that we will face in life need faith as the concluding factor because those are the decisions that will have dire consequences that cannot fully be understood through fact. We must develop our faith from the very beginning of our lives and constantly reexamine it to stay mentally healthy. At any point in a person’s life, our faith has come from the original foundation of a toddler’s faith and has developed into a complicated faith with many characteristics.
From the first moments of conscious thinking in life, humans must make decisions based on faith. “Should I put my life in the hands of my parents to help me over the years become a competent, independent human being?” is usually the first question posed by a toddler, whether the toddler consciously knows it or not. Since the toddler has obviously not had any prior experiences with these people, no experience could effect the baby’s answer to the question. Neither could any information about these people from another person help them, because the toddler does not yet possess the ability to communicate with anyone else. So the first decision of a toddler’s life must come only from faith. In almost every case, the baby will choose to allow their parents to take care of them and lead them through the beginning of their life because without the parents’ support, the baby would be unable to survive. From this original faith sprouts more faith which people will direct towards different people and issues throughout their lives.
When a person needs to make a decision on whether or not to have faith in something or someone, they will most likely have a complex explanation for the state of their faith in that person or thing because faith consists of a complicated view including risks, doubts, changing opinions, and trust. If faith does not consist of taking risks, no reason would exist for putting effort into decisions because without risk nothing negative would happen from that decision. For example, if the question “Should I drive drunk?” had no risk involved then the decision would not matter because no harm could come from it. Because of our experiences to the contrary, we know that negative things can come from making the wrong decision, like injury from driving drunk; so risk is involved in faith. While having no faith at all certainly is not healthy, having complete faith in someone or something is also not healthy. If we all placed our complete and unexamined faith in the president, he would no longer need to keep the best interest of the country in mind for we would not question him. We should continue to question and reevaluate our faith or lack of faith in the president as our knowledge of the matter changes. By questioning our faith constantly, a human’s faith in someone or something will mature whether that means gaining faith in that object or losing faith in that object. The most important aspect of faith is that it rests highly on trust because facts cannot decide the problem. Humans usually develop their trust in something or someone through both prior experiences and external information about the object. For example, to make a decision on what college to attend, there are certainly many facts available to make the decision but ultimately, the decision must come down to faith because no one can ever be sure in what college will fit them best. Trust, then, must also be placed in the information available for reliability: Does the writer have bias, How involved is the writer in the process. Throughout a human’s life, faith consists of changing opinions, having doubts, taking risks, and placing trust in something or someone which constantly alters the relationship.
While our development of faith matures throughout our lives because of a switch from a foundational faith to a complicated faith, faith should always play an important part in our lives. The decisions we make will always effect who we are and, without faith, we would not have the ability to make correct decisions. If only indirectly, all our faith will always effect our lives in one way or another.