We all have a faith, even those who profess no faith. Faith isn’t just about believing in the unseen; it’s about believing in what you have seen. It’s about your motivation to get out of bed each morning. It’s about persevering through struggles and setbacks. It’s about holding onto hope when life is hard and suffering surrounds you.
Belief without hope only leads to nihilism and faith in nihilism only leads to your demise. It’s a suicidal death sentence. Nullifying any need to continue this journey because everything and everyone is eternal emptiness. A malady of manufactured meaninglessness that the modern world has embraced and elevated as its essence.
While nihilism is an extreme example of a false faith that only leads to death, it certainly isn’t the only conviction that leads to self-destruction. The most dangerous and deceitful faiths are the ones that promise an empty hope. Like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of death and false desire; the antithesis of life and love.
The world is filled with visible and invisible burial grounds filled with human remains in allegiance to a false hope. Presumed monuments of hope that are actually nothing more than memorial markers of our mortality. False faiths feigning tribute to something other than love. God is love.
Lives sacrificed on the altars of ideology, ism’s, identity, and every human invented faith. Every deceptive belief centered around the state, or the self as opposed to being centered around something beyond the me; God.
My life a microcosm of lived false faiths. A valley of shadows that tempted me with the hope of finding what I desired as opposed to what God desires for all humans, the peace that surpasses all understanding and eternal life. A faith that required belief in a power much higher than I, or in any human or human institution.
My young life was all about praise and accolades. Seeking the approval of the adults in my life because I falsely believed that love was earned as opposed to gifted. Living in trepidation my world would disown me because I was gay. A faith centered on masked fear as opposed to love.
My adult life was all about stuff and status. A devout materialist trusting only in my senses and desires. Professing faith only in myself and my intellect. Disregarding the reality that even materialists believe in an unseen faith. That the sun will rise, the laws of gravity will exist, and always assuming they will live to see another tomorrow. A faith centered on arrogant pride as opposed to love.
My entire life was all about blind allegiance to human institutions. A naive trust that politicians, corporations and institutions of all affiliations would do no harm. Never questioning why we fund endless wars of genocide, why the increase in physical and mental illness and why powerful people are protected at the expense of the innocent, both children and adults. A faith centered on mechanical obedience as opposed to love.
Unquestioned trust in any human or human made creation will always disappoint you, let alone potentially destroy you. We are all fallible and we all will fail one another. The human heart is deceitful above all things. Not asking why, suffocates any sense of hope because it only leads to a life filled with untruths and stumbling in the darkness.
In our “I” world, egoism stifles any sense of hope because in reality you control very little if anything in life. Your identity as (insert title) can be gone in a blink of an eye, including your life and your life’s loves. Every human and every creature is one breath away from death.
My litany of false faiths were all about me and the world, and they all ultimately failed me. They all lacked any lasting hope. The type of hope you’ll need when life is terrible, and it will happen. It’s only a matter of when, not if. Aging will make sure of it as you watch family, and friends die while your body and mind decline.
Because my faith is rooted in the Way and the Truth and the Life, through Jesus Christ, hope overflows. My life and heart have become a fountainhead of love not just me, but for all people. Including people like me that don’t always deserve love, but are nevertheless created in the image of God as I am.
I’m not immune to suffering or death, no one is. But because my faith is rooted in Love, hope springs eternal like my life. A faith that conveys itself through lived love.
Peace. God loves you.
If you want to learn more about how my spiritual awakening came to be, you can read further about it in my memoir Finding God in Vegas: A Gen X Spiritual Awakening, available on Amazon and across all platforms in print or electronic or audio.