What is faith: how a person’s beliefs arise out of nothing

Introduction

Hearing the question “What is faith?”, a person often imagines certain supernatural beings who are usually worshiped in specially designated places, but we will look at the pressing question differently.
The story will not be about choosing a successful religion, but about how to create your own world with the help of faith and form beliefs that are suitable for a person. Content

• Knowledge is not enough
• What is faith and why is it needed? Development
• Possibilities
• Realization of resources

Whose side is the government on? To trust or not to trust?

At first glance, it may seem that people who choose distrust are less vulnerable to society.
Nobody knows anything about them, they do not open up about their experiences and, in principle, do not tell anything about themselves. But there is a downside, such people do not have the power to approach people on their own initiative. It turns out that someone who trusts others can freely change the distance in a relationship - moving closer and further away. These people tend to have more power in relationships because they have more choices.

Knowledge is not enough

To understand what faith is, you need to understand the history of its emergence. Here the opposite concept called “knowledge” will help us. Knowledge is unambiguous reliable information, justified logically, scientifically or otherwise.

Knowledge to some extent shapes our worldview, but when we get up from our desks and go out into the real world, we are still left with a bunch of questions: how to be happy? how to solve problems? how to find your favorite thing? where should we go and why? what to do with your shortcomings? how to be confident? Is it even worth looking for answers to all these questions?

Having thought a little more, we realize that science does not allow us to solve almost any “everyday” issue , except for banal survival. For example, knowledge about gravity or electric current will not be superfluous, but it is not enough to achieve happiness and achieve high goals.

Here in the head of every child a logical question arises, which all teachers have heard: “Wonderful information, how will it help me in life?!”

It is amazing how large a knowledge base humanity has, and how little it can provide in the life of one specific person.

Trust is a change in distance

By revealing his experiences to someone, a person automatically changes his distance, he becomes closer. It is not surprising that people do not trust their problems and thoughts to people in whom they are unsure. Simply, they keep their distance from them.

Every person who wants to improve relationships with people must remember the rule - if you want to change relationships with people, learn to trust. Naturally, you can not try to get closer to other people, not open up and not trust, but, for example, wait for the moment when people themselves begin to reach out and will be the first to open up about their experiences. But it is worth remembering that trust is often mutual. “If I trust, they trust me.”

A person who decides to trust should understand that there is a certain degree of risk when he may be misunderstood or even rejected in his revealed experiences.

What is faith and why is it needed?

Science does not answer many questions that must be resolved in order for a person’s worldview to become holistic, which is why faith was invented. It allows any assumption to be considered true without any evidence .

This means that we can complement the sketches about the world that science gives us with any colors to our taste with the phrase: “Now I myself will decide what the world will be like and will begin to live in accordance with it.”

This is how we independently figure out what is “good” or how to do the right thing (remember the conversation about how everything in the world is relative). Then we begin to believe in what we have invented, which creates a complete picture of the world, so any person believes in something .

Development

Each of us begins to move and grow from birth - this is how nature intended. But to move, you need to start from something , and with a bunch of questions in your head, this is impossible. Therefore, for every “unscientific” question, a person creates an answer for himself. In this way we gain certainty, thanks to which movement becomes possible.

Possibilities

What is faith? is a tool that gives a person opportunities. Usually we decide for ourselves what we are capable of and what we are not, and this opens up a path for ourselves in a certain direction. This, by the way, is a good example of how thoughts materialize.

Any achievement is the result of hard effort, patience and a huge number of failures, which becomes possible only when a person has steely faith in his ideas.

Realization of resources

Each of us has something: desires, abilities, potential. Surely you have once felt that you are thinking about the wrong things, that you are in the wrong job or in the wrong company - these are very unpleasant sensations with which our inner voice tells us: “You are not using your resources, this is not suitable for you, change something.” anyway, try something else.”

Resources, in the presence of faith, allow us to realize the emerging opportunities , thereby closing the circle within which our growth occurs.

Myth three: faith in God means loss of freedom.

Faith is used to manipulate human consciousness. Religious leaders use our faith to turn us into obedient, weak-willed cogs.

In fact, true faith in God leads a person to true freedom. First of all, faith in God gives a person direction, an understanding of the purpose and value of life. And this inevitably leads to a revision of relationships with loved ones and a revision of priorities. Young people often stop drinking and smoking and give up promiscuous sexual relations. From the outside it may seem that someone or something is controlling a person, that he is not free. However, in the longer term, such a person lives a much happier life than those who remain attached to evil habits.

A person who sincerely believes in God, first of all, focuses on his conscience and his relationship with God. Such a person will not blindly follow the leader and believe empty slogans. On the contrary, if his freedom is suppressed, he will find the strength to declare it. A person who believes in God cannot in any way be a “weak-willed cog.”

We have looked at only some of the most common myths about faith in God. Of course, the choice “to believe or not to believe” always remains with the person himself.

How a person's beliefs are formed

We talked about what faith is, now let’s figure out how it happens. The process involves two stages: assumption and reinforcement.

Assumption

Supposition is the object towards which faith will be directed. For example, a person assumed that he could learn to sing. It is impossible to prove this assumption from the starting point, so you just have to believe in it.

An assumption is a product of consciousness, which means a person understands perfectly well that he himself created it; it has not yet been sufficiently studied and tested so that one can seriously rely on it.

Reinforcement

Any faith needs reinforcement. We cannot just believe in anything without justifying it in any way for ourselves. Therefore, having believed in an assumption, we strive to evaluate its truth in our lives, gain experience, make observations in order to at least somehow verify our guess.

If an assumption manages to survive in our minds for enough time, then we often confirm it in practice. The result of prolonged faith is the formation of a person’s beliefs - a strong and rarely changed structure, settling in the subconscious, which no longer needs special reinforcement. Convictions become the rule and begin to determine our lives; our worldview is mainly built on them.

Ready-made beliefs cannot be begged from good friends or bought in a bookstore. They must be developed through the process of our own thinking, which must certainly be done independently in our own head.

Dmitry Pisarev

What is mistrust?

Mistrust is the easiest path to loneliness. It is impossible to build any normal relationship if there is no trust in each other. Distrust is a defensive reaction of a person who is unsure of people and their reactions to their actions. If you look and look for the roots of mistrust, then most likely the reaction comes from a person’s own lack of confidence in himself, the fear of being rejected, deceived, or not accepted. By refusing to trust, a person closes himself off, thereby trying to protect himself from negative experiences. There are several reasons for mistrust:

• lie;
• betrayal;
• failure to keep promises;
• envy.

Read more: How humility can help new parents

Mistrust can come from a person's family. When a small child opens up to his parents, he shows them his fragile soul. If parents overestimated, punished or humiliated the child in his desire to be open, then in adult life such a person will avoid trust, realizing that those closest to him can cause pain, what to say about strangers.

How we believe

Although any faith gives us something, it is important to understand the side effects that exist. Let's consider two approaches to a person's formation of his beliefs.

Faith vs.

This includes any belief against what we desire . For example, a person wants to have a nice country house, but at the same time believes in his inability to find a well-paid job. Sometimes he even admits the possibility of getting such a job, but for this to happen, many factors must converge, such as successful acquaintances, luck, social status or geographic location, and since they do not converge, the function of a good job remains, although possible, but inaccessible.

If you believe in something and it doesn't exist, then you have nothing to lose. But if you don’t believe, and it exists, then you lose everything!

Blaise Pascal

These are all different forms of faith against. This approach is the most popular among people, but where does the wild excitement come from, what does this faith give?

Safety

We are used to choosing the path of least resistance in everything. It is much easier to notice the bad, it is clearly perceived and imprinted in the memory for a long time, which means it will be easy to come to a limiting assumption. It will also cost a little effort to create a conviction out of it for a person. For example, to be convinced of the inability to sing, it is enough to simply do nothing or, in extreme cases, remember a couple of unclearly performed compositions.

The good thing about faith against is that at the least cost we can form beliefs and quickly come to certainty.

For ease of understanding, let us imagine the worldview as the land at the disposal of man. A worldview based on faith against it has its own limits, which means our possessions are surrounded by a fence.

The presence of a fence allows you to focus on a specific piece of land, study it in detail and learn to navigate the area perfectly. Speaking in Russian, such a world is easier to understand; it becomes clear to a person what to expect in life, and this gives a feeling of security.

Lack of development

The only negative, which negates all the splendor of faith against, is depriving oneself of opportunities, since most of them remain hidden behind the fence from our sight.

Moving through a closed area, every time you come to where you have already been , you can call it movement, but you definitely can’t call such walking development. This means that resources will continue to gather dust in the warehouse inside us, and our desires will still remain unattainable.

Faith for

Every person, no matter who he is, longs for more in his soul, because nothing is ever enough for us - this feature ensures our development. But you can create more only by believing in more, which faith for allows you to do. It was this kind of faith that was discussed in the harsh story on the topic “How to start acting strong.”

If you want to live in a just world, believe in justice and then you can create it. Such faith, of course, gives a person opportunities, but along with it comes a lot of fun difficulties.

Insecurity

Believing is much more difficult, because you have to constantly reinforce your faith in practice. For example, to be confident in your vocal abilities, you need to work hard and learn a lot.

Any process of creating more than you currently have means walking in uncharted territory with many obstacles along the way . You need to have a strong desire to continue to believe in such a direction. People with this model of faith are rare, which means they can rarely gain support and understanding from their environment.

What we usually say to a person who has shared with us a completely unrealizable idea: “That’s an interesting idea, but be realistic!” If all people listened to such advice, we would probably still be throwing ugly children off cliffs. Significant achievements occur precisely when a person ceases to be a realist and begins to believe in more - that’s what true faith is.

There is no sense of security here. When you don’t believe in your abilities, then another failure will not be news to you, it will be accepted painlessly and will only confirm your assumptions. But if you believe in what you want and encounter difficulties, they go against your ideas and seriously shake your faith, testing your strength.

The certainty here lies in understanding why difficulties and failures happen. We often tend to perceive such events as a hint of an unfavorable outcome. In fact, problems are a necessary good for achieving what you want.

Nothing good comes easy to a person , therefore, when encountering difficulties, one can judge that something worthwhile will come out of it. This understanding allows you to save energy on worries and focus on movement.

Theresa

During the program, a woman was sitting next to the doctor. Black-skinned beauty Teresa in traditional bright African clothes. She didn’t touch me, she literally tore my soul in half!

She said that one day men from Rwanda came to her village and she recognized them by their accent. They broke into her house and killed her three younger brothers, her father and grandfather in front of her eyes. And she turned 22 just two days ago. She just received her matriculation certificate. For her, that same future was just beginning.

In hell

The men took Teresa captive into the jungle. Along with many other women, she became their sex slave for eight months. She was raped 28–30 times a day!

One day, her captors decided to move their camp, and to do this, everyone had to cross the river. And Teresa said to herself: “God gave me the opportunity.”

Can you imagine?! They killed her brothers, father and grandfather, her entire family, raped her every day 30 times for eight months straight, and she continued to believe in God?! This was exactly the moment when you could say to yourself: “With all that I have seen and experienced, there is definitely no God!” And she saw the opportunity for escape given to her by God.

The escape

She threw herself into the water, and the stormy current carried her for 5 kilometers. Until she found herself on the shore, where some peasant picked her up. He took her to his village and invited her to stay there. She spent many months in this village.

To make you understand the horror of her condition after her experience, I will say that in her body there was no longer a partition between the anus and the vagina. Dr. Mukwege was urgently called. He stated that he did not know what to do about this problem. The woman had multiple infections and inflammations and could soon die. And on top of everything, she had to be very careful with manipulations and treatment, because she was four months pregnant.

When Teresa found out about this, her desire was to lose the child. But the doctor said that it was simply impossible to get rid of it in such a situation, because it would be another dangerous shock for the body, another operation that would have been better avoided. The child will have to be saved!

The doctor managed to “fix” Teresa and save her. She gave birth.

Only six months had passed since the day of birth, the same men with the same Rwandan accent came to this village too, took her away again and began to rape her again! And she got pregnant again!

On the set

As Teresa told her story, I signaled to the cameraman not to film me. I cried! We are all put on makeup before filming, I felt like all this makeup was floating on my face. Everyone who was on the show that day cried!

When I got on stage, we first spoke to Denis Mukwege, and then I approached Teresa.

“Teresa, I’ve never met anyone like you.” How do you keep faith? After everything you've been through, tell me how do you do it? This haunts me, I am a believer myself, but I have never experienced what you experienced! I do not understand how?

- Monsieur Lefrancois, if I didn’t believe in God, I would die. God saved me. God gave me hope for a better world. And I realized that maybe with my intervention I could change the world.

She tells me this, and I suddenly realize that this woman will be seen by 2.7 to 3 million people on a prime time show! She gave meaning to what she was living. And she is already changing the world!

Learning to believe

There is no universal faith, it is individual for each individual life, but we have a few thoughts that will contribute to a fruitful search for your specific faith.

Don't automatically believe

A person’s belief is just a deep-rooted assumption that was not initially justified in any way, not a law, but only a hypothesis in accordance with which we decide to exist.

Beliefs can be anything , but usually we have no control over the process of choosing them; they are created automatically based on upbringing, the influence of society and other conditions in which a person lives. When beliefs have formed in our minds, we rarely analyze their benefits and necessity, and this makes it difficult to notice their irrelevance and negative impact.

It is not enough to define morality by adherence to one's beliefs. We must also constantly raise the question “Are my beliefs true?”

Fedor Dostoevsky

Understand what you want

The algorithm for creating effective human beliefs looks like this:

1. choose an assumption;
2. we begin to believe in it and at the same time strive to determine how well the chosen assumption suits us;
3. if the assumption turns out to be suitable, then we transform it into a belief that will benefit us on an ongoing basis;
4. If the assumption turns out to be unsuitable, we choose another one and start the algorithm over again.

The effectiveness lies in the fact that such faith allows a person to form worthwhile beliefs that will subsequently work in his favor.

The impossibility of using this algorithm lies in the lack of understanding of one’s own desires. If you have a poor idea of ​​what you would like in life and how you strive to see the world, then you cannot consider any beliefs suitable, so we choose whichever ones.

Desire does not appear in a person by chance; it allows you to believe in something strongly enough to make it feasible. By ignoring desires, we lose driving force and the right direction.

A person's beliefs create his world

There is one defense mechanism that maintains our worldview in a holistic and complete state. The mechanism is this: a person in everything in the world strives to see a reflection of his beliefs so that their truth is not in doubt. This explains why two people understand the same experience differently, draw different conclusions, and open up different possibilities.

The presence of such a safety system greatly helps a person who has decided to believe for, because in any even the most terrible situation he will see a new opportunity on the path to what he wants. But if we form beliefs thoughtlessly, and they do not correspond to our desires, then we will continue to see the world from the perspective of the impossibility of achieving what we want, and this will further strengthen our belief in our own mediocrity .

About self-confidence

One of the main reasons for the formation of beliefs for a person is the desire to be confident, because confidence allows you to move faster and achieve goals. Often we hope to build self-confidence by trying not to change our beliefs. The more strongly certain ideas take root in us, the easier it is to rely on them.

But self-confidence is achieved not because of the seeming inviolability of beliefs, but due to their positive impact on our lives. If you notice that your beliefs help you get closer to your dreams, only then will you begin to trust them and gain real confidence.

Dr. Mukwege

I had the opportunity several times to be a guest psychological expert on television in one very rated program. There I had the chance to meet simply amazing people.

For example, I once met Dr. Denis Mukwege. He is called "the man who fixes women." He was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize and won it the third time. Mukwege studied medicine in France and became a gynecologist. And then he decided to return to his home country - Congo.

In the Congo, more than 500 thousand women have been raped in the last 10 years. Rape has become a weapon of war. Yes, such is the world where we live now.

Carier start

When Denis Mukwege returned, he thought he would help women give birth. But the first woman who entered his office as a patient was a rape survivor. Her rapist finally took a revolver, inserted it into her vagina and shot...

The doctor then encountered such cases every day without exception. Until the day I told myself that I needed to tell the whole world about it. Then the warring parties decided to kill Dr. Mukwege. The bullet passed 2 cm from his heart. He was urgently transported by plane to Belgium, where his brother lives. Mukwege underwent surgery and spent several months abroad.

Return

Women in the Congo saw him as a real savior. And they did an incredible thing: they teamed up and jointly bought him a return plane ticket, just so that he would come back! Can you imagine how much a plane ticket to Congo costs? And what kind of money is this by the standards of that country with meager earnings? And the doctor is back!

But this time the international community assigned two bodyguards to him. They did not leave his side during the filming of the program.

I was deeply touched by this man, his faith and dedication to his work, his involvement. An extraordinary person!