What is faith? Does it mean the same thing to everyone? Does it mean the same thing in all circumstances?
When do we have it? And when do we lose it?
When you come right down to it, faith is a state of mind, a sort of spiritual bank account into which one makes deposits and from which one makes withdrawals.
In the temporal world, faith presupposes trust. You have faith that a true friend will never let you down. If the trust is gone, so is the faith. But the rules seem to be different when it comes to religious faith. And it is this difference that makes religious faith a far more permanent, far more potent force — for good or evil.
In the matter of a spouse or friends, for example, faith is predicated on trust and on certain expectations, religious faith is not. There is no mutuality, no contract, when it comes to faith in the supernatural or the Divine. Religious faith does not rest on give-and-take with the other; in essence, it is a give-and-take with ourselves.
And that is why the question “Do you believe in God?” is a far more important question than “Is there a God?” It is not the object of religious faith that is important — Krishna, Allah, Christ or any other — but the subject of that faith, namely, the individual. The power of religious faith, and its potential for good and evil, depends entirely on the processes in the individual human mind. It has everything to do with how the experience is internalised and harnessed.
It is the power of this belief, and often the willingness to suspend disbelief, that builds up a sort of ‘spiritual energy’. This energy enables the believer to accept misfortune gracefully, even positively; to try to make the world a better place; to live a meaningful life; to weather all the challenges of the choppy sea of life.
But when belief becomes dogma, when fervour becomes fanaticism, when involvement becomes intolerance, the same spiritual energy bank is drawn upon to wreak violence in the name of religious faith.
All this is as old as the history of mankind. We have harnessed the sunlight, the wind and the waves. But we have yet to learn how to send religious faith as a messenger to reach inside the human mind, including our own, and unleash the power for good each and every time.
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