Saturday, 16 May 2009

• Faith

  
  

  My first act of faith... would have to be this article. I have started out with one word, underlined it and started writing. A complete void, a nothingness of purpose, ideas none, a non-existing audience. Yet, all this, unaccompanied by a writer's bock. A lethal combination.

  This is an ode to faith, as I know it. A faith in myself to show myself that nothing is impossible. A task I have assigned myself no resources at  my disposal and yet one that demands plenty. I would assume you would require a minimum of an opinion on faith or a lack of it to wax eloquent on the topic. Unfortunately, I possess none.
  

  I dig the nooks and crannies of my mind and bring out relevant contexts with respect to faith. I find God, loved-one, self-belief, confidence bestowed on something, an act done in good faith and an abrupt silence.

  I finger each of these contexts and find myself bemused. For the word itself conjures up an emotion with a halo (almost) around it, cleverly conditioned into my psyche through years of being exposed to ‘faithful devotees’, ‘faithful wives’, ‘impossible missions accomplished by people who had faith in themselves’ and their additive virtues thereof. Of course, the perusal of some of the hundreds of opuses on the role of hormones, nerves and other medical and psychological jargon might give me a sneak-peak into the working of the mind and body towards giving birth to this emotion; I have no interest in going down that lane at all. I wish to examine the first context and its ramifications - that of the faithful devotees and the impact of their faith on themselves.

  So I ask myself a direct question. Is faith good? The answer pops up surprisingly quickly. I think it is good as long as the recipient of the faith is up to the mark. If I put faith in a deity and am answered by a deaf ear, my faith shatters. On the other extreme, if my faith is answered by a favorable outcome, what goes to prove that the response was a reward for the faith and not pure chance? So the faithful keeps the faith again and again till met with an unfavorable response.

  What the faithful does now is the slippery bit. He might switch faiths, turn faithless or keep the faith that what has happened is for the better and retain confidence that his deity is watching out for his well-being nonetheless.

  This clinging on to faith, not knowing what is to come makes sense only when the faithful has stripped himself of all desires of his own. When the faithful negates his own will and places complete confidence in the unseen object of his faith, will he undeniably attain psychological fulfillment. No outcome can dissatisfy him. The faith shields him well.

  The question is – Is the faithful aware of the great sacrifice demanded of his faith? Or does he continue to tread the fragile ice of desires waiting to be fulfilled at the mercy of his faith? Does he lose some iota of his faith in the crests and troughs of sanctions and disposals, as he sees them, of his dreams?  If faith might diminish so, does little faith or much faith mean anything at all?

  My point is, a less-than-completely faithful person partially believes in the fulfillment of his wants. Then how is he different from the faithless? The faithless partially believes in a favorable result too, on the basis of chance.

  It is the faithful with residual desires that I pity and wonder if the halo is misplaced after all.

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