I have always struggled with the word faith, the only times I’ve heard it mentioned are when someone has it or hasn’t got it, or should have it, “you gotta have faith” George Micheal.
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. The promise of wishes fulfilled, the belief in the absence of tangible proof.
It’s easy to confuse faith with trust, or a belief in something but the part that separates them is in the absence of concrete fact.
In the past I have tried to explain faith referring to the sitting process. When we sit on a chair we sit down believing that the chair will hold us and that we won’t fall on the floor. Recently I’ve realized that for the majority sitting on a chair is just an act of trust in the chair, based on the evidence of it not breaking previously and the health and safety requirements that must be adhered.
I’m not trying to say that faith requires no evidence, to believe something with no substantiation would be blind faith, or similarly naivety, and the consequences of making decisions or the foundations for life without weighing up options and researching are extremely serious. For example you could go to the Doctor because of a pain. The Doctor recommends surgery but without investigating the operation, the side effects, other possible causes of the pain and other possible treatments, you go ahead with the surgery and the side effects of the operation cause a much bigger problem than the original pain.
We should approach all things with an open-minded skepticism, not naïve nor cynical.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use." - Galileo Galilei
“[Faith] is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods” C S Lewis.
