Faith and Organized Religion Essay

When one is asked to define faith, he may come up with answers which tend to actually be misunderstandings of faith. Most commonly, one is inclined to speak about how he or she “has faith.” Faith, however, cannot be had because faith is not a human possession. It is not a possession of self either. Faith is not a thing, and cannot be reduced to such because faith is a communal relationship between G-d and the body of Christ.

Why do you think he made the choice to leave the seminary after learning to read and write?

Faith is accepting what you are taught or told without trying to prove or disprove it, rather than discovering it through experience. Those who believe in God have faith. It has not been proven that God exists; similarly, it has not been proven that humans are kind, honest, and good by nature. Young Goodman Brown is a character in "Young Goodman Brown," who leaves his known world in Salem village and travels an unknown road in a dark forest in the middle of the night, a common motif in literature better known as the Hero's journey, and is faced with obstacles. He must decide if he will carry his journey out till the end, or turn back and not learn the truth about himself and other

A new phase of his life was beginning, and Elias decided that he would dedicate it to becoming a better person. Elias’ metamorphosis began with him formulating steps

These events in John’s life plainly represent the modernity processes of secularisation and rationalisation. John lived in a very strict religion where prayer and church events where apart of every aspect of your life. At age 16 John left the church as he was not satisfied with just accepting what he was taught without questioning it and questioning denoted a lack of conviction in the faith (Nester, 2016). Secularisation is a drop in formal religious influence over people’s lives and further reliance on technology and science to explain the world (Giddens 2009, p. 695). John eventually returned to having a faith of his own form in which god was all loving and inclusive not what he was taught. This loss of religion and foundation of new religion now that he has gained more knowledge is a classic example of the secularisation

The second way was that he showed mercy /forgiveness/healing/ conversion. He shows this by doing confessions for other people. But in the beginning he wasn’t able to hear confessions from other people because he didn’t prepare well and didn’t study for the required text. Then he decided to be a holy

He had chosen to consort with the enemy. He had committed the ultimate bane by interacting with those miscreant people. He sympathized with the very people who his friends abhorred. When he first moved away, people whispered about how he might turn. Heated debates occurred about whether he would he would be impenitent, or whether he would abjure his religion. This was the religion he was born into, he had never known anything else. How could he turn on it? How could he even live in the company of the very people he abominated for so many years. Some families in his home city would disown a person for turning like this. It would throw other families into a state of tumult. This particular boy's family had even interred his grandfather bearing symbols and colors of this timeless religion.

need enlightenment. In his explanation, St. Paul brings up that he too was once a sinner, in fact,

When I was four years old, I used to stand on top of the pews and sing my heart out. I had what my mother still refers to as "a heart for Jesus," and I loved to sing. I sang so loudly and with so much enthusiasm that I was an embarrassment to my incredibly introverted parents and a "blessing" to the adults around me.

When asked to choose a term or concept and establish what it means, the vast vocabulary humanity has established hindered Jennifer from making her choice. Jennifer understood the word had to be defined beyond its denotative meaning. While critically thinking and searching for the particular word, she thought about faith. According to dictionaries, the word faith has two distinct definitions. First, it is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as being confident or having an unquestioning belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing (American Heritage Dictionary). Likewise, faith is defined in the Oxford Dictionaries as a strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof (Oxford Dictionaries). Faith is either trusting and having confidence in a person or thing, or having a strong religious spirit while accepting the existence of God as real. Usually, faith is parallel to god and religion, but faith can be found in values, in society, in the community, in organizations, in the universe, and most importantly, in individuals themselves.

Faith is a subject that is discussed directly in the Bible. It explains to us the real meaning of faith. (Hebrews 11:1) tells us that

What is the meaning of faith and why is it important? People believe faith is worth more to people then religion. The person may have the benefits of loving god and excepting him into that persons life without all the so called “work”. Many people believe that in order to accept God into the life of that person will need to have religion. But is that all wrong?

For many years we have defined religion as a system of believes particularly belief in a God or gods. The problem with this is that we categorize too much under the umbrella of religion that does not fit under this category; as Craig Martin argues in, A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion, “The colloquial use groups together dissimilar things. All of those things we call ‘religions’ simply do not share a set of core properties”. We tend to define Catholicism when asked to define religion. Many very educated philosophers have tried to come up with a perfect definition of religion and failed. It is an important subject of study because it gives unimportant objects significant meaning. For example, it can turn wine into the blood of Christ. Religion is present in all of our lives in some form. Religion is not a term but rather a state of mind, an idea that cannot be grasped. We classify religion as a noun, but in actuality the name refers to the activity or function. Religion is more about the structure than the content. It does not need to be defined in order to adequately study or take part in it. Anthropologist, Talal Asad, argues, there is a flaw with every definition. This leads to the conclusion that religion simply cannot be defined.

As a youth, he had been described as having no discipline and quite obstinate. This resulted in him leading a double life as a risk-taker with his schoolmates, yet quiet and bookish at home. His family thought he would surely become a pastor, but after his sexual awakening at age fourteen, sacred lifestyle was no longer appealing to him.

Faith has been interpreted in many different ways. Normally, it is used as trust in God or .even multiple gods. Greek mythology is a good example of having faith in multiple gods and goddesses. Christians, Jews, and Muslims share their faith in one God compared to other pantheists. Pantheists, or pantheism, is the belief in multiple gods. Unlike Jews and Muslims, Christians have a deep faith in God and his teaching. This is shown through their actions and how they apply lessons from the Bible. In a more worldly view, faith can be interpreted or expressed in trust. A great example of this would be when you say “ I have faith that we will win the game today>” Comparing this between spiritual and worldly faith, spiritual faith is the trust in a religion and their God. Worldly faith, on the contrary, have their faith in each other, objects, and even specific subjects. What I mean by this is something that goes