Faith and the 21st Century

Faith is a living thing. It lives in human beings everywhere. We move, breath, and have our being with faith. My own faith or perspective leads me to believe that faith itself is a gift, a gift with a divine connection, and connects us to the Divine. Faith has lived in humans from ancient times all the way to the present, in various lands, nations, and tribes.

Now we are the 21st century. Faith in humans has always interplayed with local, regional, national, and global natural, political, cultural, and social events. For example, there have been plenty of natural disasters in this past year: earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. Sometimes, it can be scary for human beings to live on this unstable planet. Now add to this prophesies of "doom," end, and judgment such as from the the Jewish-Christian Scriptures of the Bible and the Mayan Calendar "prophecies."

Its understandable why many Christians today tend toward the pessimistic view, especially with the Christian apostles prophesied of lawlessness and lovelessness in the end times before Christ's return. Some have focused on all the bad, that they would rather be raptured out of this world. And I understand why they feel that way.

But Global Faith takes a different perspective of focusing on much of the good in this time and age. One of these main good things is the fact of the great increased awareness and consciousness of FAITH! Yes, "faith." Is that understood in the objective sense such as synonymous with religious groups and their teachings or the subjective sense of belief in human minds, hearts, and souls? I would say " Both." The fact that in the last 30 to 40 years, "Faith" has come to be used synonymously for various religions (and thus "Interfaith" movement) reflects this greater awareness. Whether the awareness came after the usage change or the usage change came as a result of the increased awareness, I cannot say.

Now that we have established that "Faith" is commonly used today as a synonym for various religions, would you be surprised that some of the founders of the worlds "great" religions seldom if ever talked about faith? That's right. No world religion today is today what is was when it was first founded. The founders laid the groundwork. Later, they have all undergone much development, organization, and met various challenges along the way throughout history. Buddha Siddartha emphasized meditation and the middle way between neither extreme of strict ascetism nor over-indulgence. Lao-tzu emhasized the yin and yang and harmony with nature and all human works destruction by the eternal Tao. Confucius emphasized moral living in society with the principles of li (courtesy) and jin (goodness, kindness). And Moses, as recorded in the Torah/Penteteuch, used the term "faith" once (Deut. 32:20, based on Strong's Concordance, KJV, and the NKJV Concordance).

But we have to look further than just the founders and latter followers actually using the word "faith" to many other statements that muster, demand, or encourage faith in their followers. Faith never comes in a vacuum. It rides the magic rugs embedded in religion and cultural myths and ideologies.

When we come to Jesus of Nazareth, based on the New Testament Gospels, we find that he did place an emphasis on faith. The apostles of Jesus Christ in the 1st century placed an even greater emphasis on faith, that faith is the basis of salvation. It can be argued that Christianity's emphasis on faith greatly contributed to the increased awareness of faith in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Whereas "faith" was not even a major point of doctrine or discussion among some of the world religions 100 years ago, now in these recent years has become used synonymously with the various religions. And I think that this is a good thing. And this is the main point of this blog post.

The concept of "faith" has "grown up," matured, among human beings, and now recognized universally, globally. Yes, there are certainly differences of beliefs, understandings, concepts, and practices among the various religious peoples globally. But this concept of "faith" is one aspect that may unite us all, after the fact that we also all share human nature (or are their some hidden alien practitioners out there?) And again, here I am speaking of faith in both the objective and subjective senses here. My other thesis that I highlighted in the Fifteen Articles of Human Dignity on Faith (see link http://dignityworld7.wordpress.com/) is that the capacity to believe (now we are talking internal faith) is in all human beings, globally, past and present, like an empty gift box. And then that box gets filled by whatever we are taught from our earliest days to growing up.

In conclusion, I have a positive perspective on humanity globally with regard to faith. The walls dividing peoples of humanity over religion have shortened, so at least we can see them and sometimes talk with them. I believe this is the way to peace, and interfaith efforts are paving the way to conversations among peoples of different Faiths, dissolving some stereotypes held in the past. Working towards peace, even religious peace, does not mean each of the religions have to dissolve their differences of belief and practices. We should work toward peace because it is the way of love that most religions preach and teach, and also plan to mitigate against repeating the atrocities of past mistakes in history. Let us rekindle the positive aspects of faith and religion in the 21st century.

Faith, Purpose, Image/Design

Thank you for your interest in Global Faith. This blog is a companion to new website I am developing: www.globalofaith.org. The site and future org's purpose is to encourage, nurture, and educate humanity on faith, spirituality, and religion.

Now there are two kinds of faith defined: objective and subjective. If this is not defined and explained, many could misunderstand the purpose of the blog and website such as to unite the religions of the world. Those who would prospectively misunderstand thinking that this is a hidden purpose would actually be assuming that "faith" in Global Faith is used in the objective sense. The objective sense is such as "faith" is commonly used synonymously with a religion, denomination, or religion in general. Not so used in Global Faith. "Faith" in Global Faith is used in the subjective sense referring to internal faith in human minds, hearts, and souls.

Therefore, Global Faith is a tribute and praise to this beautiful (most beautiful?) gift of faith in humanity of every tribe and race and continent from most ancient of times to this present time in the 21st century.

Global Faith Org uses the copyrighted Global Praying HandsTM image which was created and designed in the winter of 2009 for the purpose of branding, highlighting, and supporting the then www.globalprayingservants.com (and .org) efforts and to develop products with the image to market, set up on the www.globalprayinghands.com. Global Faith Org is now the umbrella site with its non-profit purpose of nurturing and educating about faith from a global perspective. And we are planning to officially file for the non-profit status for Global Faith Org. Any products purchased from the http://www.globalprayinghands.com/ website will be in support of the Global Faith Org efforts which is committed to the Global Prayer efforts (visit http://www.globalprayingservants.com/)

Your comments, imput, or questions are welcome. God richly bless you and come back to visit!