Max Grady
Junior Theology
9/8/04
Faith

Faith is an extremely complex topic to discuss or define. There are many sorts of definitions that go along with it that all revolve around belief and trust. People tend to define it differently but not completely different. Everyone's definitions revolve mainly around the basis of belief or trust. But there is much more to faith than just believing or trusting.

Often times people are confused about what it means to have faith. There is sometimes an uncertainty about faith because some people only see faith as a religious aspect. However faith pertains to everyday life not just the religious aspect of someone’s life. The aspects of everyday faith, such as believing and trusting in people and things also carry over into a person’s Faith in their religion or lack of religion.

On the trust aspect of faith there are different levels of trust. No one can have absolute trust in something. There are always periods of doubt in out trust. We may believe we always trust our parents, and that is mostly true, but the degree in which we trust our parents differs from time to time, but it is never absolute, there is always some doubt in our trust. Being a man of faith does not mean that you are a man of faith all the time. There will always be times when faith falters and becomes weaker, when you are tempted by evils and bad things your faith will be tested. And no doubt sometimes people will make wrong decisions so their faith my change and become weaker, however it is something that can always be brought back.

I think that faith is what instills confidence in us. Faith is what helps us make important decisions in our life. Its without a doubt that everyone makes many decisions throughout life that affect their lives. Faith is used in the most important decisions. One can go about making decisions based solely on factual information but that won’t always cut it. Sometimes you just have to go with what you believe when making a decision, regardless of what facts or other people may tell you. When making decisions there are certain things that must be realized, like our own biases. Faith can help us in making decisions by aiding us in acknowledging our biases and instilling confidence in us that we can make the right choices even with our biases. Being able to make the right choices is extremely important because every choice we make can have an impact on our lives and the lives of others. So putting effort into having confidence in ourselves and trusting ourselves to make the right decisions by thinking them through carefully is worth it by far.

Having faith can be a positive thing but also a negative thing. Putting faith in wrong things can have very negative effects on our lives. By not thinking thoroughly about who we trust or have faith in, we allow ourselves to believe information that may not be credible or put support into wrong things. However, by thoroughly thinking about who you should trust you will be able to make the most important decisions in life easier. The most important decisions we make will be faith based, so the more trust we have in how we make the decisions hopefully the better the outcome.Making decisions blindly may work occasionally, and the outcomes my be great, but personally I woudl rather use faith to guid emy decision making.