Some thoughts on faith

The blog I published earlier has had me thinking about faith.

Faith is a funny word. It means so many different things. I went to Google and said define:faith. I got a lot of interesting definitions. One was a list of fictional nations from Gundam SEED. Another was a band in the early years of American Punk. The closest definition to what I grew up with was this one "a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny; "he lost his faith but not his morality"".  That's close, but not quite right. This is the one I grew up with "Faith is to hope for things which are not seen, but which are true."

So, those definitions are great and all. But, what do they really mean? The word gets used in so many different ways. I have faith in my team, my family, my friend. I'm a member of the LDS faith. I have faith in God. I have listened to Faith No More. If you are a cheating spouse you are faithless. If you are a Marine, you are Semper Fidelis, always faithful, Semper Fi.

Faith is all those things and more. And yet, we still haven't truly nailed down what faith is. Some words have a very concrete definition. If I say "cat", you know that I am speaking of a feline. A lion is always a lion, a tiger is always a tiger. But is faith always faith?

Part of what makes the definition of faith so slippery is that faith can't be pinned down. You can't quantify faith, you can't take it out and weigh it, measure it and give it percentages. You can make faith grow or shrink. Your actions can cause people to have more or less faith in you. You can do things to make your faith in God increase or decrease. But you can't say I have 3 pounds of faith today.

The reason I have been thinking of this is because good things have been happening today. A corner has been turned and I have faith (see there it is) that it will be good. I am hoping for it to be true. I was sustained by my faith in God today, which I can't see, but I know is true. I was also sustained by the faith my friends have in me. They knew that I can do it and so I can. It seems that while faith may have a lot of definitions and many contexts and uses, it isn't something that we can do without.

Is the definition of faith something that is highly subjective and personal, or is there one definition and then we all shade it by our experiences? When you hear the word faith, what do you think of?