On Faith, Part I: Is Faith Really a Choice?
Faith is central to basically every action we take — even for those who aren’t necessarily “religious” or “spiritual”. In order to act or do any given thing, a certain degree of faith (or belief, as it were) accompanies the act itself.
However, faith as it pertains to the realms most often associated with religion or spirituality is not a topic that’s easily grappled with on any level — especially an intellectual one. Which is to say that faith certainly isn’t something that can be adequately captured through a conceptual or academic pursuit.
Faith is something that we do eventually come to - or stray away from - in one way or another. Whether or not it is actually a choice, however, is a debate.
Many people discover a brand of faith through trials in their life — where faith frequently becomes a crutch, a way out, an answer. But the more I sit with this notion of how we ultimately arrive at our faith, the more I find myself asking a deeper question: do we really choose, or are we led to decisions themselves? For, if we’re truly honest with ourselves, where is it that we can really say that we choose a thing of our own free will and volition? And though the topic of how we arrive at decisions themselves might be a slightly different topic altogether, it has monumental consequences when discussing the notion of faith.
For, if we look into that question of free will and ultimate agency very deeply, we might be surprised to discover that a lot of the things that we think were our own choices were no such choice at all: they were outcomes of who we are as people — outcomes of circumstances in our lives, outcomes of patterns and systems that predated us altogether. It might be more accurate to say that we were always meant to experience those outcomes in such a way that we appeared to have more agency within those decisions than we really did. Now, that is not to say that we do not have any freedoms or that we cannot actually make choices and exercise agency; but we do need to acknowledge that many of the things in our lives that we think are absolutely and completely our own choices tend to be things with more lures and circumstances attached to them than we might realize.
In an honest reflection: we are frequently drawn to things more than we know; and faith is no exception — possibly even to more of a degree than with other so‑called choices.
Frequently, for many, faith is an ultimate solution; as a utility, it can also be a critical crutch, or a way to grapple and deal with circumstance. So, one person’s choice to come to faith should be no more ridiculed than another person’s choice to come to any number of coping mechanisms employed within the tremendous difficulties and challenges that life presents to us. If anything, this is where faith reveals one of its most honest faces: it is not always noble. It is not always clean. It is not always the tidy theology of a catechism. It is often a reaching, a grasping, a leaning into something that can hold us when nothing else seems to be able; which is why so many feel so redeemed in faith.
Contrarily, Karl Marx famously called religion the opiate of the people; and as it pertains to some, there is a valid critique in a portion of that statement — as faith, if used in such a way, can be an agent to numb the pains of reality. Of course, faith can also soothe. And it can be an answer that requires no further questioning — an answer that absolves us of the struggles of being human beings. For, when we say, “It is God’s will”, or “My faith guides me”, agency and responsibility are displaced — even if only slightly. Whether or not this is ultimately a good use of one’s faith is up for another in a host of many debates surrounding the utility of faith in and of itself.
Yet, even here, the question of choice remains complicated. Even if everything that we do was already chosen for us, we would still have to ask: who is it that did the choosing? And more importantly, why was such a path ultimately chosen? Oddly enough, given our current human experience it would seem that we are both choosing and living out our own fate at the same time. And so far as faith is concerned, like so many other things within our lives, we are often led to it by a sequence of circumstances beyond our control; and yet, we are - for some reason unbeknown to us - ultimately drawn to it and choose to interact with it.
So, is faith a choice?
Yes, in the same way that anything is a choice in a universe where so much is already in motion before we become aware of it. No, in the sense that faith - when it is genuine - does not feel like a carefully weighed option from a menu; but it is more so something that has happened to us — is a part of us, and is something that has seized us and we have earned through our experiences, our suffering, and our continuation.
For, everything we do requires a brand of faith. Though, what actions we bring forth wholly depends on how we carry that faith along with us; or, maybe, more accurately, how that faith carries us.
