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TUS It has long had religious diversity and was built on the idea of religious tolerance. But certain beliefs have always been rare. none. Until recently, yes. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who profess no religion (those who have a religion but rarely or never practice it) will rise from 16 percent in 2007 to 29 percent in 2021. Did. (In the early 1970s, about 5 percent of Americans supported this position.)
As one can easily imagine, this phenomenon of faith decline is of great concern to many religious leaders. Catholic theologian and bishop Robert Barron has built a vast ministry, in no small part internet-based, aimed at reaching these so-called people. none. Rather than simply blaming secular culture, Barron redirects his criticism, calling this escalation of denial “a disturbing commentary on the effectiveness of our evangelical strategy.”
However, the increasing phenomenon of “nothingness” does not indicate a lack of interest in spiritual life. Today, many people who have previously left the faith, or who never had it to begin with, are seeking something resembling faith in their lives. They are open to thinking about such a commitment, but don’t know what to look for. Perhaps this describes you. If so, then, ironically, research data on why people are told they’re nothing in the first place may hold the answer to what you should focus on to set you on a spiritual path. I don’t know.
Itracking Regarding the rise of non-believers in American religious life, Pew also studied people who were religious in childhood but abandoned their faith as adults. In his 87 percent of cases, this came down to one of his three reasons. He quit his faith (49 percent), felt it was too uncertain (18 percent), or didn’t like the way he practiced his faith (20 percent). More succinctly, most people leave a faith because of their beliefs, feelings, or practices.
Although these are reasons why people leave religion, we can also speculate that the same three aspects of religious experience are central to maintaining faith, or finding and maintaining faith anew. You might say that beliefs, emotions, and practices are the macronutrients, the necessary ingredients for healthy faith. If you only have one of them, you are spiritually malnourished. Just believing it is a dry theory. Emotions themselves are unreliable and sentimental. Practicing in isolation is dogmatic. To build a new and sustainable spiritual diet, you need to focus on all three.
Many great thinkers have essentially made this point. For example, the devoutly religious Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote in his book: Pensee, wisdom calendarin difficult times, “you must accept what the wisdom, intellect, and heart of humanity tells you. The meaning of life is to serve the power that sent you into the world.”
As research on emotions has shown, emotions are the basis of religious experience. Some religions promote trance-like ecstasy. samadhi In both Hinduism and Buddhism, it involves complete meditative absorption. Most faiths emphasize the role of emotional worship of God, such as the Prophet Muhammad’s teaching that believers should “love Allah with all their hearts.” But you can’t rely on emotions alone, because emotions are very changeable. As St. Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th-century founder of the Society of Jesus, put it, faith includes feelings of desolation as well as consolation in those moments when one feels that God is absent from one’s life.
The second element of faith is belief. This is a doctrine that you have accepted as truth, at least provisionally. Because these truths are not testable like scientific propositions, they are, as defined by Thomas Aquinas, “the middle ground between science and opinion.” These are propositions that we learn from reading and listening to other believers and ultimately choose to accept. Examples include God’s Law for Jews and the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment for Buddhists.
Accepting such beliefs as true does not mean that they are impossible to correct. In fact, research shows that spiritual people are generally more open to pondering existential questions and willing to revise their views. However, because the tenets of these faiths are based on considered arguments rather than emotion, they tend to be stable and durable.
Finally, religious practice provides a set of actions and rituals that one commits to observe to demonstrate adherence to the faith for oneself and others. This is the element of faith that takes it out of the realm of abstraction and makes it part of real, physical life. You can say you believe in the ideas of Zen, but until you practice zazen, Zen itself will not become a meaningful part of your life. Similarly, you can say you believe in the divine inspiration of the Quran, but it doesn’t mean much unless you actually read it.
You may think that any practice requires both belief and emotion. So, for example, you’ll only want to go to a political demonstration if you already believe in the cause. However, you may have noticed that the opposite is happening in your life. If you don’t attend a demo enthusiastically, the experience may stir up emotions and beliefs that lead to going to future demos.
This is a basic form of what scholars call “path dependence,” a phenomenon in which past decisions lead to similar actions in the future. This concept is typically used by economists and political scientists to explain institutional inertia and organizational resistance to change, but the same principles seem to apply to individual human behavior. Such path dependence can be influenced by both positive and negative feedback. that is, either the sense that people’s choices cause increased returns, or that they are self-reinforcing or “fixed in.”
When religious practices harden your ideology, that feedback loop can become problematic. For example, economists have modeled that voting channel dependence may be one of the causes of increasing polarization. Since this is a matter of faith, the trick is to be aware of your path dependencies if they give you negative feedback. If you feel or act like a “locked-in” partisan voter, you may be too rigid about your beliefs. belief. But if you use path dependence to your beliefs solely for positive feedback, that is, if your beliefs result in increased returns, perhaps increasing altruism, community bonds, or a sense of meaning in life. If you do, you will use it as a force for good.
Simply put, be completely honest with yourself about why you practice your faith. If your beliefs generate positive feedback, keep going.
a healthy faith Therefore, we need all three sources of spiritual nourishment. Data suggests that when one or more of these factors – beliefs, emotions, practices – are missing, people leave. So if you are looking for faith in your life, you need to look for all three.
Here’s the best way to do this.in tolstoy calendar of wisdom” he quotes an ancient Chinese proverb. Those who love them are meaner than those who follow them. ” In other words, in developing healthy faith, practice is more important than emotion, and emotion is more important than belief. This means the opposite of what most people do to develop their spiritual lives. They read and think in order to acquire knowledge and opinions, that is, beliefs, and then see if they “feel” their faith, and only then proceed to practice. that. But as the saying goes, this priority doesn’t work very well.
The right approach is to start practicing regardless of your current beliefs and emotional state. If the practice evokes an emotion in you, after that Learn faith to develop knowledge and opinion. This is an experimental, hands-on approach, much like how many inventions and innovations are born. Inventors try something, see if it works, and figure out exactly what’s going on.
In the context of faith, this means you might go to worship several times. You can then ask your feelings about whether the service stirred something deep within you (or whether it left you cold). Finally, if you feel that the former is true, you can begin to intellectually investigate your belief system.
This three elements The idea of faith is useful for applying to many areas of life, not just spiritual pursuits. For example, consider marriage. emotions The relationship of love and affection is dead.without it knowledge and opinion There is no depth to your spouse.without it practice If you perform love rituals, your partnership will wither away. This same algorithmic progression of faith can also chart a path to marriage. First, start practicing on a date. If you feel attraction and feel the beginnings of love, continue the relationship. The pairing develops as you gain knowledge and form a favorable opinion of your partner.
Obviously, this example of marriage is not a coincidence. To find faith is to find a form of love: love for God or an enthusiastic spiritual connection with the universe. But like all good and valuable things in life, faith and love are worth thinking about and seriously striving for.
