Faith Journal
Faith by New Advent
Faith by Wikipedia

1. As the section’s title implies, the purpose of this section is to define faith. This is a complex task, as faith is versatile – it can mean different things for different people. Because people have unique faiths, it is important to be able to communicate your faith to others.

Thomas Zanzig (the author of the freshman theology textbook) simplifies faith to mean “belief and trust.” While this definition works well secularly, it does not help define my Catholic faith. It is very important for me to be able at least to describe my religious faith because if someone whose religious beliefs clashed with mine (an atheist, for example) were to question me about my faith, I wouldn’t want to draw a blank and have that person dismiss my faith as worthless.

So if my faith were questioned, I would tell the person about Jesus – both His teachings during his life and His sacrifice for us that ended his human life. I would then explain that just as Jesus loved all people equally and unconditionally all the time, so we as Catholics are called to love.
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2. One key idea I want to remember from this section is that what is right and what seems right for a person are often very different. An example of this concept is Aaron Feuerstein of Malden Mills. After Feuerstein’s New England textile mill burned down, he was faced with an important decision: either retire and pocket the insurance money, outsource jobs to regain a greater and faster profit, or rebuild on-site, which would show loyalty to the workers but would not help the company as a whole. Feuerstein chose to rebuild. As a result, he will probably have to relinquish some of his decision-making power to bankers, making it (on the surface) a poor business decision. However, he now gets to live with a clear conscience, so I think he made the correct decision.

Another important idea from this section is that faith is often a product of a person’s environment. For example, the terrorist in training interviewed by TIME Magazine believed he was doing the right thing – he even said that if he were to kill innocent people in a mission, “I know when they arrive in heaven, Allah will ask them to forgive me.” This man must possess deep faith to justify a suicide bombing. I learned from this man’s account that while people from other cultures may have beliefs that oppose my own, that doesn’t mean they are soulless monsters. This is an easy mindset to fall into, but it is important to remember that even terrorists can have deep, complex faiths.
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3.
Image Source
This image represents “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” a poem by John Godfrew Saxe that we studied earlier this year. In the parable, blind men feel different parts of the elephant and argue about the definition of an elephant. The men cannot see past their own narrow perspectives, causing them to have a narrow definition of an elephant.

In the same way I cannot expect to be able to truly define faith if I use only my own faith experience as a source. Instead, I find that it is better to share my faith with others – not only does this increase my general faith awareness, but it also helps strengthen theretofore lacking parts of my individual faith.
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4. My struggling to define my own faith applies always applies to me because faith is just that – a constant struggle. Nary a day goes by when I do not question my own faith, or even the purpose of my own existence. As detailed in the Five Foundational Lessons, I believe that the most important decisions I make are faith decisions, for everything I choose is affected in some way by what I believe. Because I am constantly making decisions, my faith is constantly relevant. I do not know what I would be without my faith.
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