Faith and religion
Definition 1
Faith is the acceptance of any provisions that do not have theoretical or practical evidence. Faith is the opposite of knowledge.
Definition 2
Religion is a certain hierarchy of views, based on belief in the supernatural and consisting of a set of moral norms and types of behavior, rituals, etc.
The main, defining element of religion is religious consciousness.
Definition 3
Religious consciousness is a reflection of the real state of affairs in fantastic images.
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The main features of religious consciousness include sensory clarity, a combination of truly adequate content and illusions, faith, symbolism, and emotional richness.
Religious consciousness is completely based on religious faith, as a central, unifying element.
Faith in this case is represented by a special state of the psyche that arose due to a lack of accurate information and contributes to effective human activity. When the situation changes and additional information appears about the falsity or truth of the object of faith, faith can disappear or strengthen. Faith is an important factor in the integration of the individual and the group, a stimulus for people’s determination and activity.
Religious faith is distinguished by a number of significant features. Thus, it assumes the existence of hypostatized objects, which include God, angels, devils, etc. It assumes the possibility of communicating with these objects, the possibility of mythological events occurring in the real world, the reality of events, the symbol of which is a religious action, the supernatural power of authorities, who are ministers cults, teachers, saints, prophets, etc.
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In religious consciousness there are two levels: ordinary and conceptual.
- Ordinary religious consciousness is a set of images, ideas, stereotypes, attitudes, illusions, moods and feelings, habits and traditions, which reflect the living conditions of people in ordinary surroundings.
- The conceptual level assumes that religious consciousness is a specially developed and systematized set of concepts, principles, ideas and concepts. It consists of the doctrine of God, the world and man, the interpretation of the main spheres of social life in accordance with the principles of the religious worldview and religious philosophy. Religious consciousness, that is, faith, is the main element of religion. All other elements depend on it in their form and content.
Meaning of the word religion
And no matter how representatives of the hierarchies of all churches prove to modern believers who have woken up from atheism - potential Orthodox, Catholics, Lutherans, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and others - that the TRUE FAITH has long been preserved by them, and therefore the problems of choosing a religion for those seeking paths to God does not exist, nevertheless, NON-CONFESSIONAL BELIEVERS, each for himself personally, will seek a religion in which their reason, faith, conscience and love of philosophy merge into a harmonious unity of good will.
In truth, his own mother was raised a Roman Catholic, although she renounced her religion upon marriage and adopted her husband's religion, as befits a good wife.
For example, the content of the institution of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion is expressed in such concepts as “religion”, “religious organization”, “religious group”, “religious tasks”, “religious rites and ceremonies”, etc.
We must overcome the errors of our generation, our people and even our religion, if generation, people and religion interfere with our meeting with God.
Making some concessions on their part, they proposed that Christians do the same in order to unite everyone into one Christian faith.
Matt. 23:13), presenting their religion as worship of the True God and Creator of all things (“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and all uncleanness; ") (Matt. 23:27), in fact, they fulfill the will of none other than Satan himself, ("Leave them: they are blind leaders of the blind; and if the blind lead the blind, then both will fall into the pit.") ( Matt. 15:14), because the Holy Scripture says: “And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said: O Lord God of Israel, who watcheth the cherubim!
My parents - people of different faiths - were such tender spouses that they did not dare to upset each other by once and for all determining my religion (only at my mother’s funeral did I learn that she represented the Evangelical Church in this marriage).
I would gladly become a Jew in order to avoid unpleasant blanks in the “religion” column, but my father believes that after his death, when the secret of his religion finally becomes known, I will have to renounce Judaism and people may interpret this the wrong way.
However, I believe that the inner reluctance to become a hunter, the ability to recognize and curb the hunting impulse is connected with something deeper than temperament, upbringing, moral values, acquired knowledge, religion or individual ideas of honor.
My religion is directed not only to the royal word of poetry, but also to the menial word, captured or expressed to tell the truth, refute a lie, to help at least one person.
Epistemological and religious meaning of faith
The main sign of religious consciousness is belief in the supernatural, which, in accordance with religious doctrine, does not obey the laws of the surrounding material world and lies beyond the boundaries of sensory objects, that is, not in the material, natural world.
Moreover, such a definition is characteristic of theistic religions, the basis of which is the veneration of God or gods. Early forms of religion, which include magic, fetishism, totemism, etc., were characterized by belief either in the supernatural properties of material objects (in fetishism), or in supernatural connections between material objects (in magic and totemism). In the process of the evolution of religious beliefs, the supernatural became increasingly isolated from the natural, representing a special spiritual essence, which was not only opposed to material nature as a higher form of being, but also controlled it.
The religious man did not apply the usual criteria of empirical validity to the supernatural. Gods, spirits and other supernatural beings, in his opinion, in principle cannot be perceived by human senses if they have not taken on a “corporal”, material shell and do not appear before people in a “visible” and accessible form to humans. If God or some other supernatural force resides in their own constant, transcendental world, then, according to theologians, the usual criteria for testing human ideas and hypotheses cannot be applied to them.
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This is one of the many mysteries that many have tried to answer in one way or another. Why do some people have faith, while others are disgusted by it? This article offers an answer to these questions from both a priest and a psychologist rolled into one.
Let's turn to the basic sources: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). So, “the attainment of things hoped for”—what is it? First of all, this is what is needed, what is needed. For example, lost health or family well-being.
But how many believers have received “what they expected” over the decades of their faith? This sometimes happens, but more often than not, a person’s state - mental and physical - remains the same or becomes even worse from this fruitless expectation. But people still go to church and believe.
Instead of the desire to get something, the process of waiting, endless and hopeless waiting for something begins to prevail. This psychological state is expressed in the dogmatic prescription of expectation of the posthumous Kingdom of Heaven. We can say that the entire religious culture of Orthodoxy is built on this.
Thus, instead of something concrete, a believer begins to expect - so to speak - the expectation itself. This becomes the main psychological content of religious faith. This is confirmed by my twenty years of experience as a priest. Why is this happening? The answer lies in the parent-child relationship.
A child, whether he wants it or not, is doomed to be attracted to his parents. This is due, first of all, to biological reasons - without mother’s milk, care and attention, especially in the first year of life, the child simply will not survive. In the future, from the parents the child receives everything necessary for full human development. This is learning to walk, speak, think, toilet, human relationships, etc. But the most important thing a child needs is the care and love of his parents.
The desire to receive all this from parents is supported in the child by the instinct - so to speak - the instinct of becoming a person. In this case, the term K is more appropriate. G. Jung is a psychoid, an intermediate formation between instincts and archetypes, but in our case, for the sake of simplicity, we will use the word “instinct”.
So, instinct forces the child to expect from his parents everything that he needs for normal psychophysiological development. But it often happens that the child does not receive this, primarily in the emotional sphere. Imagine a child sitting alone at home all day long waiting for his mother. In this case, the mother’s arrival will be an extremely valuable event for the child, which relieves him of boredom and brings joy.
The mother comes, but the child’s life as a whole does not change because the next day he is also forced to wait for his mother. Moreover, an extremely valuable event - the mother's arrival - can be devalued by her bad mood or her chronic dissatisfaction with the child. Another example: a child has been waiting for a whole year for an extremely valuable event - a promised toy. The long-awaited day comes, and the child hears: “Leave me alone!” What does this attitude of parents lead to?
The child gets used to waiting without getting what he expected. He gets used to languidly waiting, without hope, for the arrival of the most valuable event, which, as he dreams, will give him a full, joyful life. This fruitless expectation structures the child’s psyche. Fruitless waiting becomes a habitual way of life.
This is how the habit of living with expectation and “confidence in the invisible” is formed, which never comes. This is how a tendency towards religious faith is formed. Such a person is looking for an environment consonant with his inner state and finds it in the church; here he feels, in the full sense of the word, at home.
It should be noted that “expectation of the expected” can exist not only in the church environment. For example, a woman with such childhood experience can wait her whole life for her beloved married man and, of course, habitually suffer at the same time. Often religious life is combined with similar addictions, and one reinforces the other.
It is obvious that a child who is accustomed in childhood to receiving from his parents what he needs and not only what is necessary, who is accustomed to getting his way from his parents, will not at all “understand” a child who constantly lives with unrealistic expectations. That is why it is so difficult for an unbeliever to understand a believer. These are completely different psychotypes.
It should be noted that the church environment provides not only the opportunity for habitual expectations of the unrealistic and invisible, but also many other opportunities for dependent behavior - abandonment of one’s own needs in favor of religious dogmas or the priest’s fantasies, suffering and humiliation, fantasies about saving one’s neighbor.
Igor Polyakov
