Faith It Till You Make It How to Build Your Faith One Doubt at a Time

Chapter One What Is Faith? We do not guess today the mood, the pleasure, the power of tomorrow when we are building up our being. Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat; but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal movements of the soul, he hidÐ they are incalculable. -Ralph Waldo Emerson Would you like enough faith to move mountains or part the seas? What about enough faith to get you through a serious illness or the loss of a loved one? Could you use more faith when you contemplate a job change or wrestle with a bout of depression? We all would like an extra dose of this elusive elixir that seems to hide when we need it most. Yet, if we are to find faith, we must first know what it is. There is no one way to describe faith. Actually, faith cannot be defined. Only approximations can be made. These approximations are personal and subjective, but very real. Every one of us knows when we are feeling hopeless and pessimistic about the outcome of our lives. We all know what discouragement feels like. Most important, we can observe the behaviors that are the result of such feelings. These behaviors can be tracked and labeled. By tracking our feelings and behaviors and giving them names, we can readily see that faith is not an "either/or" proposition but rather a continuum. In other words, we can be more or less hopeful at a particular time in our lives. Our optimism may be higher on one day than it is on another. Paradoxically, our faith can be strong in one specific area of our lives, but weak in another. All of this points to the phenomenon that faith can be affected-increased or decreased-according to a variety of factors. We will study that phenomenon throughout this book. We will learn what faith is, and how it can be affected and influenced by our intellect and our emotions. We will learn that faith is an innate gift that can evolve through education, practice and commitment. And we will come to know that hope and optimism are not dependent on external circumstances. We are not victims. We are not at the mercy of the life that surrounds us. The Evolution of Faith Matrix Our primary learning tool will be the "Evolution of Faith" matrix (see page 4). I developed the matrix and its four stages after being inspired by the groundbreaking work of Marsha Sutton and Eric Stom. The top of the matrix shows the four different stages of faith: natural, lost, educated and enlightened. There is a chapter dedicated to each stage. The columns of the matrix describe the behavioral, mental and emotional components of each faith stage for ten categories of spiritual growth: deity identity, emotional response, intellectual activity, mental participation, innate reaction, probability factor, religious tools, causality, divine involvement and reactive pattern. In this chapter, I explain why these categories are important for the student who is interested in personal and spiritual growth. What I have tried to show with the matrix is that faith does not have an "on/off" switch-though it may sometimes feel that way. Faith actually falls along a continuum. It can be built over time and with practice. The matrix can be used in two ways: to identify spiritual progress and to guide you along the steps to spiritual growth. Let's take a moment to review the categories. Evolution of Faith Matrix [read more]