Faith and Motivation
In our modern day Western culture, the word “faith” is quite often viewed with anything ranging from suspicion to distain. We are ‘enlightened’ after all and reason and rationality is the only thing we need to navigate our world. Faith is fine for children’s stories or the deluded, but it’s certainly not something worth taking seriously. But is this really true? Is a life lived in the absence of faith so desirable or even a possibility?
I suppose it’s necessary to first define faith, and while it’s primarily just a synonym for trust, the connotation which is often implied is one of irrational and unsubstantiated belief in a supernatural, invisible and mythological being. Yet faith is in fact something simple and common that actually influences a great deal of our lives. When we travel and return home, even while it’s out of view, we have faith that our home is exactly where and how we left it. So for my purposes faith is simply a matter of trust, which I would suggest requires the object of faith to be unseen in the moment (or there’s no need for trust), but certainly not unfounded or lacking in evidentiary support. But even more faith isn’t just some benign belief, it’s ultimately a profound source of motivation even if it’s just a way to get home.
As I may have too often proclaimed in my musings, rationality or reason, even conscience provide an inadequate picture of the scope of the human mind; it’s all just information, it’s not motivation. In the past I have asserted that self-interest is the missing motivational ingredient, and while I still hold this view I’ve recently expanded the idea because we need something to temper self-interest, which seems to be resolved by faith. This may seem a strange idea, but hopefully I can make some sense of it.
Of course I would define conscience as an inner knowledge, an innate but also nurtured understanding of right and wrong; reason or rationality being an intellectual tool for discerning the choices available to us, and also to understand what we experience. Again this all exists in the mind, it’s simply information without the motivation necessary to both utilize our reason but also to turn these thoughts into action. Decisions aren’t simply made for the sake of making decisions, they’re made to guide our steps. The distinction between all of these components may blur together to some degree; motivation drives rationality, faith helps to inform our conscience, and rationality is also how faith is developed. Conscience might in fact be seen as the primary motivator: that old angel and devil on our shoulder analogy, but what I’m beginning to think is that the angel is faith, and the devil ultimately, self-interest.
In the United States, we have what would be called a “Constitutional Republic”. Our Constitution is the supreme authority which establishes and restrains government power. But the Constitution is just a piece of parchment, it has no capacity to restrain our government by itself, it only has force when the broader society puts their trust in the precepts embodied within the Constitution, and agrees to be governed by it. When any politician takes their Oath of Office to protect and defend the Constitution, they are asking us to have faith that they will… keep the faith. That these politicians will always choose to constrain self-interest and adequately represent the interests of the public, by an acknowledgement of something bigger, something greater, something outside themselves; and the principles which undergird or coincide with that object of faith.
Whether the faith involved is as simple as finding our way home, as consequential as the governing principles of a nation, or as contentious as holding a religious belief; it is this faith that drives our actions. Self-interest isn’t always “the devil”, but I would suggest that when it’s on the side of good is only when it coincides with faith — a person is a community, what you are tomorrow is influenced by what you do today, if you put aside the immediate self-interest, for the sake of future self-interest, then you are relying on faith that sacrifice will produce reward. And faith isn’t always angelic, only when it’s directed toward a greater purpose, when it’s sole focus is the self it tends toward corruption. Mankind at his worst is self-motivated above all else, at his best he gives of himself for the sake of another, in concert with a higher ideal. So this faith, for example a faith in the God of Scripture, is demonstrated by adherence to the laws and conditions set by the God of Scripture, such as the Ten Commandments. Precepts which call us to temper self-interest for the sake of relationship with God, and with each other. Faith is expressed in action, and without it actions tend to serve an ultimate purpose of self aggrandizement at the expense of everything and every one else.
So when we begin to remove faith from our lives, we ultimately have only self-interest to guide us down a dark and dangerous path. Either with the bloody guillotines of the French Revolution at the dawn of the enlightenment, the nihilism and secularization that followed, or humanity’s darkest moments culminating in the 20th century; when the self becomes our guiding force, we can reason our way into any bad behavior. Faith then becomes crucial, because men are not angels and we need that voice to hold back our devils. Faith, is the only thing powerful enough to counterbalance our own self-interest, and motivate us to choose what’s right when we can just as easily find reasons not to.
This idea is one that I’m still trying to develop as I seek to understand the meaning and purpose in life, in our choices, and the authenticity of my own faith. As I continue this journey of discovery, I’m beginning to see a real connection between faith and the motivation to choose the good.
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