![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
writers_muses Topic 10.3 - Faith
Nov. 18th, 2007 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
on_holy_groundFaith.
So simple, and yet it is something that so few people truly possess. As children, we move through our lives with untold amounts of faith, yet as we grow, we seem to lose much of that aspect of ourselves. The world has become a cynical place I’m afraid, and cynicism leaves little room for faith. Perhaps part of the problem is that too many people think that faith and belief are synonymous with each other, when in fact this is far from the truth.
Belief is a conviction of the truth of something, be it a statement, being, or phenomenon, based on some kind of evidence. It is a mental construct based on conclusions formed about the world around us. Our beliefs change as we grow and process new information, and thus our view of the world changes. As we age, and learn new information, our beliefs become closer to actual reality.
Faith on the other hand is trust and loyalty, both because of the evidence, and sometimes in spite of it. It is knowing that there is something out there beyond what can be seen and touched. Like love, it is something that we can only really know when we have experienced it for ourselves. It is a non-rational knowledge that there is more to our world than meets the eye.
In essence, belief is knowledge of the mind, while faith is knowledge of the heart.
So simple, and yet it is something that so few people truly possess. As children, we move through our lives with untold amounts of faith, yet as we grow, we seem to lose much of that aspect of ourselves. The world has become a cynical place I’m afraid, and cynicism leaves little room for faith. Perhaps part of the problem is that too many people think that faith and belief are synonymous with each other, when in fact this is far from the truth.
Belief is a conviction of the truth of something, be it a statement, being, or phenomenon, based on some kind of evidence. It is a mental construct based on conclusions formed about the world around us. Our beliefs change as we grow and process new information, and thus our view of the world changes. As we age, and learn new information, our beliefs become closer to actual reality.
Faith on the other hand is trust and loyalty, both because of the evidence, and sometimes in spite of it. It is knowing that there is something out there beyond what can be seen and touched. Like love, it is something that we can only really know when we have experienced it for ourselves. It is a non-rational knowledge that there is more to our world than meets the eye.
In essence, belief is knowledge of the mind, while faith is knowledge of the heart.
