It’s About Faith
I recently stumbled upon Jim Carrey’s 2014 Commencement speech at Maharishi University of Management. (Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V80-gPkpH6M)
During his speech he encouraged the audience to “Take a chance on faith — not religion, but faith. Not hope, but faith. I don’t believe in hope. Hope is a beggar. Hope walks through the fire. Faith leaps over it.”
His words have stuck with me, circling in my head and heart for over a week now.
I wrote a blog a couple of months ago regarding hope, but now, I find myself challenged to re-evaluate how I live my day to day life.
How many times do we sit and hope for things?
- We hope for a good life.
- We hope to be successful.
- We hope for a better world.
Hope is a feeling of expectation.
It is anxiously waiting for something to happen and can cause us to live in the past or the future. Hope doesn’t require action or involvement. We tend to sit back as we cross our fingers for a positive outcome.
Faith, on the other hand, causes us to act. When we live by faith, we have an internal “knowing” that allows us to commit and believe in the outcome entirely. Faith allows us to stay active and anchored in our journey not allowing the challenges or trials that come to veer us off course. Faith is knowing, either there will be ground to stand on, or we will learn to fly.
“Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
I can hope to be a published author one day, but no matter how many stars I wish on or prayers I pray, hope won’t make it happen.
Faith causes me to believe that as I pick up my pen and write, someday others will read my words.
Hope and faith relate to something unseen but to have faith is to believe in the outcome rather than wish for it.
KatieMae is Kathi Denn. Local Kennewick Author, Writer, Wife, Mother to four, Friend to many, on a journey to make an impact in my world, one word at a time.
I’ve given a lot of thought to belief, and how we adopt beliefs. Faith seems to be commonly involved.
When I looked in dictionary.com I found this definition of “faith”…
Faith:
1. belief that is not based on proof
For me, it was satisfying to see that “official” definition because that is exactly the definition I arrived at purely by my own reasoning. Having faith is choosing to believe in the absence of evidence to support the belief.
I was less satisfied when I looked for the word “hope” in dictionary.com. It offered these definitions…
Hope:
1. to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence
2. to believe, desire, or trust
The only bit of those definitions that works for me is the word “desire.”
The definition dictionary.com gave for the word “wish” is more consistent with my notion of “hope”…
Wish:
1. to want; desire; long for
Your last statement… “Hope and faith relate to something unseen but to have faith is to believe in the outcome rather than wish for it.” …is fairly consistent with my understanding of hope and faith. I take your use of the word “unseen” to mean more or less what I mean when I say, “in the absence of evidence.”
You attribute “commitment” to the word faith, where you see hope as impotent.
To be honest, I do my best to avoid faith… that is, I try to avoid adopting beliefs when I have nothing but my desires to support those beliefs.
Both hope and faith have desire behind them. I strive to understand what I desire, and I use that understanding to motivate my fulfillment of those desires. The “internal knowing“ you speak of seems to me to be confidence arising “in the absence of evidence.” I much prefer to ground my confidence on tangible evidence. Of course, it is not uncommon to have no evidence. In these cases courage is needed to move forward.
In summary, I think you have correctly identified “internal knowing” as the difference between hope and faith. I personally find that sort of knowing very unappealing.
All the best,
MalamuteMan, AKA Steve