‘Faith, hope and love (charity), and the greatest of these is love’

This is one biblical quote that stays with me. Not for the first part, but for the second. I agree, of the three, the greatest is love.

Despite 40 years of being brought up with, and then living with, religion, faith never quite took hold for me. Fear, yes, but never faith. Fear of being ostracised. Fear of being judged by others.

As Laurence Krauss recently said:

“We should never take anything on faith. That’s really the mantra of science, if you want: that faith is the enemy of science. We often talk about a loss of faith in the world today; you don’t lose anything by losing faith. What you gain is reality”

“Faith, like hope, is a human construct that simply helps us pretend that an indifferent universe actually cares what we like”

I was brought up to admire faith, but could never quite commit to it myself. An adherent rather than a communicant, I was brought up to see faith as elevating some humans above others. It is easy to say that one has faith, it is quite a different matter to open one’s mind and challenge this in a meaningful way.

What does it mean to be faithful? My conclusion is that it is mostly borne out of a fear of death, a fear of the end and that’s that. I used to take pride in expressing faith, but only to those who were faithful. Expressing faith to non believers filled me with dread. I didn’t want to have faith, simply because it gave me a sense of belonging, of kinship with family and brethren.

Instead, I want to love and be loved. To feel free to love unconditionally. Faith in God always comes with condition. To use a behavioural term, it is negative reinforcement in its’ ultimate form.

I am tattooed on the left of my chest with a cross, light shining across it, and the numbers 3:16 across the top. It is only recently that I have come to accept that this symbol represented 40 years of fear and not a mark of faith. Now, I am sorry to say, I cringe a little when I go swimming with my two year old daughter and spend much valuable time figuring out how to cover this mark of fear, but can never quite bring myself to do this. Perhaps, inwardly at least, I like to be reminded of the nonsense it represents.

PM