As you can imagine, when a Marriage and Family Therapist tackles the issue of faith and trust it most often involves infidelity. What happens is, before they call me, the couple tries to weather the storm of thought and emotion. It is only moments before the alarm sounds to abandon ship that I get a call. Side note: Infidelity is a violation of assumed or stated contract regarding emotional and/or intimate exclusivity. It is not just about sex.
Trust and faith are two different things. To help illustrate my point, I used Peter Thurston in the video above, aka Essence of thought; an active atheist . The answer is YES! I do enjoy finding counter arguments that strengthen my position, it’s entertaining. Thanks Peter for helping a Christian out.
I agree with Peter that trust is based on evidence. Faith is not held back by the need for evidence, it is true freedom.
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase
Peter sarcastically says he allows faith when he meets friends, but then it turns to trust as they reveal themselves to be trust worthy. How sad and short sighted. This is saying, as long as I reason to trust I will believe. I hope you see why this is wrong.
Approaching a relationship based on assumption and judgement is not faith in that relationship. It’s not even a relationship. It is a social arrangement based upon mutual reciprocity.
Try this on for size. According to the World Health Organization, the number one cause of accidental death is related to automobiles. That is science you can trust. I assume Peter avoids autos or else he relies on faith more than he is willing to admit.
This is my point. If we restrict ourselves and life to empirical evidence more than faith, we truly are in a sinking boat.
A man of science once said:
“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
-Albert Einstein
Faith eats trust for breakfast. Peter and I do agree on one thing. Faith and Trust are not synonyms. The next time you are struggling with trust, stop and realize that you are restricting yourself to a life based on proof. A life based on evidence alone is a safe world … but also small and lonely.
A life where you become more than you are requires faith. Otherwise you would have never been born. Never gone outside. Never rode in a car. Never took any chances. Never got married. Never had children. Never played with your grand-children. Never LIVED a life worth living.
Faith is hard and that is exactly the reason why some people will never embrace it and for that reason I weep.
A Dominican friar once said:
“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
― Thomas Aquinas
In case you were wondering … science and religion are compatible.
Keep the faith when trust has nothing to offer … It is the stronger of the two. Faith is what you have when you loose trust.
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
– Reluctant Therapist