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As an 48-year-old guy from a STEM background who tries to do the minimal-lying-to-yourself thing, I’ve always been curious about the whole faith-spirituality-devotion-religion-deeper-truth thing. It appears to be important; for one thing, it’s supposed to help you live longer; then there is the fact that over half of the world population seems to take it very seriously. So how do people seem to approach this?
It seems like there are three main directions:
- The organized religion, which, let’s face it, does not give us much space to think on our own AND it usually pushes us to think of people outside our group as the Other.
- The New Age thinking, which is more accepting of otherness, at least on some fronts, but is suffused with magical thinking and requires us to leave our reason at the door too.
- Accepting that there is no deeper meaning and we are simply individuals left to fend for ourselves; in other words, nihilism. It looks reasonable, but it is both deeply unsatisfying and lonely. It is also a betrayal of a fundamental truth: we are both social beings and a part of nature. Alienating yourself from the whole living planet, including the 8 billion other humans out there, appears to be the surest possible way to get mentally ill. Only far-right politicians and Amazon-like corporations could ever profit from that.
It looks like there is no good way out of this one, is there? You can drink the Kool-Aid and enjoy the community, along with the taste of biting your tongue every so often; some people let go of their individuality entirely. Most of us know people who have done one or the other. Or you can rely on your reason to guide you but basically be on your own forever.
Fortunately, like any good dichotomy, this one is false too. But first, let’s define some words and talk about why faith is relevant for rational people.
What is Faith?
When talking about things, it’s good to try to define them at least a bit. There are no bulletproof definitions, but thinking about the meanings of words is usually helpful. This discussion revolves mainly around three things: beliefs, faith, and religion. Let’s try to define these at least a little:
Very briefly, beliefs are what we think is true. Some beliefs are very down-to-earth, everyday things, like believing that brushing teeth is good for you. These are mostly easy to prove or disprove rationally, and they shape our everyday decisions. But some beliefs are unprovable, based on gut feelings or compelling stories. Some are placed in our cradle as we learn to talk and be human, like beliefs of organized religions and national identities. Some are marketed to us skillfully enough to make them our own; brands are a good example. And, every so often, there is no other way but to go with our gut feeling; for example, when we need to decide whether we should trust someone.
Some beliefs become important enough to take a special place in our minds. For example, if you decided to trust that particular person and it worked well for a long time, this belief grows into something more. It becomes faith, a default, something you no longer think about; there is no more need for proof; it’s simply the truth. Many people see faith as something connected to organized religion, but it is both deeper and simpler than that—it is a belief that sat in our mind, unchallenged and compelling, for long enough to become unassailable. An example would be the faith that every human being has intrinsic value, shared among humanists, for example, but other believers as well.
When you have faith in several things at once and start connecting them, seeing in them a deeper combined truth (a system, if you will), this is religion. Again, most people see this term through the lens of organized religion, but it can be entirely secular too, like the Humanist Manifesto. You could say non-organized religion is spirituality.
Why Faith Can Be Good for You
Faith, as we’ve seen, can be (there are meaningful exceptions) associated with positive life outcomes like better mental and physical health, as well as a longer life. But why?
From what I’ve read and thought about this, most of the positive effects of faith seem to come from two sources: social inclusion and decreased uncertainty. These sources are clearly intentionally addressed by most organized religions: they will ask you to attend religious services and to be charitable, both of which can be a real celebration of community; they will give you a mostly clear set of rules to follow, eliminating much of the uncertainty we face; and they will define clear devotional practices like prayer, fasting, or pilgrimages, often bringing a helpful routine into your life.
It is precisely the concept of devotional practices that interests me the most here, but we will come back to that later.
At this point it should be helpful to mention the concept of fast and slow thinking, as defined by Kahneman, among others. I will oversimplify: we use two mechanisms to think. Most of the time, we use intuitive, fast thinking. Some call it “the gut instinct”; Kahneman calls it System 1. But every so often the intuitive answer is not good enough, and we have to take the time to deliberate the question rationally; he calls this System 2. To me, this connects beautifully with beliefs and faith:
When faced with a situation about which we have an existing belief or even faith, System 1 fires immediately, and the answer is instantly available. There is no need to waste any time or think any longer; you can just deal with it. In the same situation with no strong beliefs, there will be no strong System 1 response, and we have to start thinking.
Now imagine a really difficult situation, maybe a traffic accident, a bereavement, or a relationship coming to an end. When faced with difficult choices and bad feelings, some people will be primed with relevant beliefs or faith, and some will not. For people primed in this way, these situations trigger the System 1 response; the response will be fast and usually fortified by emotion; they will probably deal with it faster. Others will be forced to fall back on System 2 and think long and hard about what is happening and how to respond. This may cause them to react too late and will definitely deepen the impact of the situation on them.
So, beliefs and faith can have a really positive effect on your life, BUT, and this is a ten-ton rocket-powered “but” on steroids, ONLY if your beliefs and faith are good for you. If you are primed by homophobic teachings of some religion, you will react terribly around gay people, causing pain for them and ostracism for you (hopefully). If you believe that vaccines cause autism, you will likely expose your children to easily preventable diseases. If you believe you are not good enough as a human being, it will be really difficult to have healthy relationships.
Examination is the only cure for harmful beliefs. By thinking about what we did wrong in a situation or being prompted to reexamine things in a conversation, we open the door to change. Of course, changing beliefs is far from easy, but still a picnic compared to changing our faith. So how to do it?
About Empowerment
In The Sovereignty of Good, Iris Murdoch gives us this gem:
… if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over. This does not imply that we are not free, certainly not. But it implies that the exercise of our freedom is a small piecemeal business which goes on all the time and not a grandiose leaping about unimpeded at important moments.
I understand it as a brilliant clarification of the age-old maxim “You are what you do.”
As we go about our lives, we do things all the time. We cook dinner for our family, we get up in the morning for work, and we go to the gym or the church or the supermarket. Each time you do something, this becomes easier—doing it shapes you just a little and makes that same act easier to do tomorrow.
But this process is not inherently positive. If you devote a little time every day to help your neighbors, it will become a habit, and everybody involved will be happier for it. If you try to exercise regularly, it will get easier each time, and you will probably be much healthier—but some people will, over time, overdo it to the point of injuries. If you spend hours each day scrolling hateful content on social media, it will become an effortless thing to spout hate at others, even harm them. We are what we do.
So if we want to have better beliefs and steer our lives more intentionally, we have to work on it.
But how?
In some cases, it’s pretty straightforward: If you wanted to get in shape, most people would join a gym and mark it on their calendar. If you hope to be a programmer, you have to dig into the books and start programming; it will take a while, but you can get there with enough practice. And you need to do a LOT of writing to be a decent writer.
Then there are the hard problems: How to live authentically? How to be a better partner? How to escape a feeling of loneliness?
So we start to think about it: What does it mean to be a better partner?
Is it better cooking, better communication, better sex, or doing more of the everyday chores? Probably all of it.
So our thinking deepens: Chores are easy, but how can I be a better cook? Trying some new recipes and cooking more often would surely help. And reading a good book about partner communication should definitely help in that area, as well as setting aside some time to just talk. Better sex requires good communication, and it can’t hurt to read about techniques and positions either.
But is that all? Can we become better partners by just making a to-do list and ticking things off until we get there?
I think most people will agree that it is a good start, but it’s certainly missing something. And here we can borrow from organized religion:
Devotional Practices
Organized religions have well-defined devotional practices: prayers, worship, contemplation, fasting, pilgrimages, and offerings. Most of these have some things in common: you are supposed to do them regularly, they cost something—at least some time, but often overcoming some physical discomfort or making a material sacrifice too—and they are devoted to the object of faith. This is a remarkably consistent pattern for many religions all over the world; it must mean something.
It is a well-known rule that we value things more if they cost us something. So this part is clear—the cost of these practices gives them value in our minds.
Doing things regularly makes sense too—repetition or routine makes whatever we are doing into a habit, an automatic thing; we are what we do.
Devotion is the odd one out—it’s not something a non-religious person is used to in our everyday lives. What does it mean to devote a practice to something? For me, this means thinking about the what and the why while we are doing it and doing it like we mean it, knowing it’s worth the effort because we thought about it well and decided to do it.
A religious person can recite certain words at a certain time while in a certain position, but that is not yet enough. Add devotion, and you get a prayer. Thinking about who or what you are praying to—imagining it—makes that something a little more tangible. Do it a few thousand times, and your religious faith will become a part of you.
But how is this useful for a non-religious person?
Consider our previous example, wanting to be a better partner and deciding to work on it: How do you do it with devotion?
Every day, as you start cooking, possibly a bit tired and bored, you could first try to remind yourself that you are doing this intentionally—you decided to be a better cook. You could then try to imagine your partner or children enjoying their meal. You could attempt to make this particular meal just a little special. If nothing else, you should have more fun doing it.
Then, when it’s time to just talk—maybe when the children go to bed—try to remind yourself that you want your relationship to thrive. You decided to make it work. You are both tired and probably a bit cranky, but remember, pushing yourself just a little makes the time you have together more significant.
And in the end, being a better lover is about deciding to be there and attempting to feel the other person as well as yourself. It’s deciding to do what feels right for both of you, imagining the ecstasy, and then making it happen together; this has to be one of the purest forms of devotion there is.
And then another day comes, and you have to do it all again.
Effort, repetition, and devotion are a way to build our rational choices into what we are. We start by thinking about what we want and then use these three principles to embed these choices into our automatic thinking mechanisms. This helps us make the right choices faster and to feel confident as it happens. Thus we reshape ourselves and make it easier for us to be and do better. We take the rational choices and turn them into faith.
But it’s worth addressing failure too. Deciding to empower yourself means a lot of work; you have to do it over and over again. There will be setbacks, even outright failures, but that’s ok; it happens to everyone. The only thing that helps is to rest for a while, think for a bit, and then try some more.
Conclusion
For me, empowerment is the ability to think about, decide to do, and then do the thousands of little things that need doing, intentionally and with devotion.
Of course, this is not at all trivial; it takes time and effort; occasional failure is a certainty. But you decided to do it, so you might as well keep at it. It will certainly get easier with time and eventually become a part of you. It will be a spring of faith in yourself, the people you are doing it with, and what you are striving for. It will make you resilient and give you meaning and connection.
It is the only thing any kind of meaningful freedom could ever grow from.
Acknowledgment
This is a heavily condensed essay, intended to convey a quite complex concept that took some time to think through. And what got me on this path was the excellent Philosophise This! podcast, specifically episodes 211 through 223—I cannot recommend it enough!
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