No matter how much you believe in something, if you talk about having faith in it you will sound foolish. It doesn’t matter if it’s a deity, a job prospect, or the weather patterns of the southern coast. As someone who is rebuilding my own faith, I am hyper aware of how pretentious it sounds to people who do not believe when I talk about my faith in God.
The thing about faith, though, is that if you have faith in what I believe, you are courageous and strong; if you have faith in something I do not have faith in, however, you are foolish and wrong. This, I believe, means that faith is either always foolish or always valid.
Being more ecumenical in outlook than the majority of the people I love is hard, it’s hard to figure out how much to push in conversation and what areas to let be. The lesson I’m learning now is that my ecumenical stance must extend to those who think other faiths are invalid as well, or I am neither open nor full of grace. It’s easy to say that the faith of others is unimportant, but it might be easier to dismiss a faith with which you have left and are trying to reconcile.
The acceptability of faith cannot depend on whether or not you agree with me.
This is one of the reasons that I have faith in faith. I believe that people having faith in something is important, valuable, and especially interesting. If you have faith in the good of people or yourself it is just as important to me as if you have faith in the same God in which I have faith. I believe that faith (in something or someone) is important and essential, but that’s likely because I’m a highly spiritual person who enjoys hearing what you have faith in and why.
Becca Kello 