Faith is an extremely complicated idea because humans are complex. For example, try to define faith on your own, without a dictionary. Tricky, isn’t it? Because words only point to reality, we cannot give a full definition. But a general definition most people will agree on is that faith has two parts, it involves belief and trust. Belief is meant to be some sort of feeling you have towards the idea, object, or person, a conviction that it is right or true. Trust is the intellectual side, meaning that from experience you have developed a trust in the individual, idea, or object. Because there are different degrees of trust and belief, there are certainly multiple degrees of faith.

Because of the experience part of trust, faith can grow or wilt according to your experiences. Faith is an ongoing process, always changing. Some believe that faith entails a certain totality, that it is not possible to have faith unless you put total faith in someone or something. I just don’t see how a person can have total faith in anything unless they’re an infant who depends wholly on others. Doubt is always necessary. Doubt is not bad. It is actually a good thing. Because humans are complex and never perceive things the same way, there is probably error in most judgments. Doubt helps a person see the error in judgments and helps change judgments so that there is less error in them. Because of the chance of error, there is risk. A person risks by having faith in someone or something every time they make a decision based on the faith. Because of this error and risk, faith is more belief than trust.

Because a person’s perception of events is different from all others and people are unique, they are biased. No one can see every side of an issue. They can only see certain parts and try to see as much as they can. This flawed sight causes us to emphasize certain key parts of a person, event, or object. The flawed sight results in a certain bias towards one side of an issue over another. Knowledge of your bias helps you less biased in your decisions. Knowing that you are biased towards people who go to SLUH over those who go to DeSmet lets you make decisions that are less influenced by your bias.

It is difficult to describe humans as having or not having faith. Humans are complicated organisms, it is hard to generalize. This generalization definitely does not cover every human, but mostly humans cannot be put into either group of faithful or unfaithful people. Do people have faith in some things to a lesser or greater extent? Yes. I certainly do. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have any faith in at least something. But do we not have faith in other things? Yes. I generally don’t have faith in some things, and I think it is foolish to have faith in everything. Should I have faith in ideas such as Jews aren’t full humans and should be exterminated? No. Because of this I cannot classify myself as being definitely in either category. But I can put my self on a scale, being a person of differing degrees of faith. Is there anyone who can be put definitely into either category, having faith or not?