I heard a comment the other day (okay, I can’t remember where – maybe the voices in my head!) that faith and hope are the same thing.

The comment stuck in my head and yesterday when the wheel fell off of our caravan (literally) on the way to a much anticipated family holiday; hope was what I had when I started ringing around to try and get it fixed as quick as possible.

As a side issue, most of the ‘caravan repairers’ were really helpful and all but one could get us in for repairs in the first week of February – the other one had nothing open until March!!!!

I started to lose hope when I started thinking about hope.

I wrote in my post Better Giving Presents about what I had received from my Mum, I had received:

FAITH
It came in so many parts, and we had to put it together ourselves.

 

I found a very small box in the back of the cupboard, which I had lost a few times over the years, but you kept finding it for me.  It was HOPE.

Even I differentiated between faith and hope in the above.  I did a bit of a Google search and waded through a few phylosophy and religious sites and other than being more confused (and having to look up too many words in the dictionary) I decided, as I usually do, it’s all about me, so what do I really think.

I thought about it and decided….

Hope is rubbish – hope is like fear (see Fear is Not Real) it is a feeling, although it probably is a positive one, it is a false one, it is a feeling about something that is not happening now and may never happen – e.g. I hope I will the lottery!

Faith is something you have NOW.

This faith cannot be about things that have not happened or may never happen – faith just is – it is not based, nor does it have to be on anything other than what you are feeling right now.  Faith is always a Yes No question and answer – if it’s a maybe, then it is not faith.

I thought about a few Yes No things in my life that I don’t hope about, I just know right now they exist – I have faith:

• I love my wife, she loves me
• God exists
• My kids are okay
• Possessions don’t matter
• I will die
• Life really is wonderful
• I know who my real friends are

I could go on, as I usually do, but I think you get the idea.

I want to hope for things, people, countries, even myself and family, but it is a waste of ‘feelings’ – it is a wish.

I hope I pass my last exam.
I have faith I will pass my exam as I did the work and studied hard.

The one thing about something not turning out that you hoped for is that to a certain extent it abrogates the responsibility onto someone else – faith is all about you.

I have commented before that I do not, read do not, believe in the power of prayer. (see a full ramble about what I believe at the page My Religion) To me it is the ultimate religious scape goat where faith and hope get confused and adulterated for the purpose of religion.  To me it is a logical conclusion that prayer is pointless as we were given one thing, the most important thing – free will.  If God controls everything and knows everything that is going to happen then free will is a myth – logically then so is prayer!

As Des would say “God is a black lesbian, as no man would be so cruel!”

I don’t think God is cruel – we have free will so we already have everything we need we just have to work it out (without praying for divine intervention – as there isn’t any).

Leave the ants in the ant farm long enough and they will eventually build a Space Shuttle.

So, hope, wishing, has nothing to do with faith – the ultimate faith is that it is all hear and it is up to us to do something good, better, with it.