Faith and Development of a Society
Faith is an indispensable factor for the development of a society or a country. Let’s take China for an example. In Chinese mythology, N-Wa, the goodness of ancient world, uses rattan whip to creative the most sophisticated creature in the world——human. However, she found that human which made by mud are fragile and soft; they can’t even stand wind or rain. Thus, N-Wa put a back bone in their back, which enable Chinese to stand still no matter how severe the storm is and how hard the difficulties they face. The backbone, thus, is the faith of Chinese people. To be continued, Fuxi, a legendary Chinese ruler credited with introduction of farming, fishing and animal husbandry, together with Xi, the god who she married with, they started the civilization of human being.
Why does Chinese culture last for more than five thousand years and survive to today? The answer of this question is that it is because of diverse but mentally-consistent faith. What faith means to Chinese people is various and complicated, because Chinese people do not have a consent faith. Some might say that Chinese people believe in Confucianism, Taoism or Buddhism; however, the faith of the Chinese is constantly changing depends on different stages of cultural revolution. Faith is not necessarily religion belief. After all, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism as a part of faith of China, contribute a lot towards the educational purpose of Chinese contemporary society. They teach Chinese people to be kind, grateful and peaceful, (“Ren”, “Yi”, and “Dao”) which are the most important quality that a Chinese should possess.
Faith in Western Culture
In the far west, people also have their god. According to Bible, God creates Adam and uses Adam’s rib to create Eva. They are the originals of human being, and they have free will, reason, and internal life. In the garden of Eden, God tells Adam that they are not allow to eat the forbidden fruit. However, the demon transforms into snake and lures Adam to taste the forbidden fruit. That, is the original sin of human. Because of the sin, human lost the freedom of not committing sins, and they also lost the ability of being immortal. If god doesn’t save, them, human will be in the hell and live with the demons. However, because of the God’s forgiveness, some people who commit to sins are saved by the God and luckily, they are able to fly to the heaven by God’s benevolence. Thus, most of westerners believes in Christianity. They believe that God gives them right of being a human nature, and the main point of human rights is equality and freedom.
No matter if it’s eastern countries or western countries, no matter how various the background of different countries is, no matter how diverse people’s thoughts are, faith is the foundation of a society. The soul of a culture. It’s influence towards the world of information explosion is indispensable, just like a man needs to have faith.
Faith vs Belief
Continuing with western faith, I believe that it’s better to introduce several prestigious philosophers. Augustine is a philosopher who is addicted to the Bible. Born in a non-Christian family, Augustine converted to Christianity in his young age. In his path of finding belief, Augustine defines it as “free will” or “volitional consent”, which sounds like faith. Anyway, Augustine seems to mix belief and faith together. Nowadays, we believe that there are three main characteristics of belief. The first one is that belief is dispositional. Instead of being conscious thoughts, dispositions are patterns of behavior. Thus, through observing and examining one’s dispositions, we might get to know what they are thinking about. The second characteristic is that faith is involuntary. Some people may say things that they don’t believe, but through examining their dispositions in the long term, you will find that they were telling lies. If you want to know what one believes in, be careful about what they do instead of what they say, because oral “belief” might be false. The last characteristic of belief is truth-tracking.
I believe that faith is trust, respect, and admiration towards a person, a view or a religion. A man needs to have faith, no matter what it is. If a man loses his expectation and goal for the future, one’s life will be meaningless. As far as I am concerned, the virtue of faith is a process of chasing happiness, which is various and depends on different people. During the process of persisting in one’s faith, only if one improves oneself and keeps chasing a better version of oneself, one could truly succeed. It’s like Socrates’ construction of an ideal city. If a just city was to be built, everyone in that city has to be just. This function could apply on faith, too. If all men in a city had the same faith, the city must be strong and powerful; if all cities in a country had the same faith, the country must also be strong and powerful. And the whole country will progress and become stronger in the way of chasing the common faith. The power of faith is unlimited. What I mean is that the virtue happiness of human race can be realized by putting effort on persisting faith by the whole society.`
