During the entire month of April, I’m participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge. The alphabet will be my motivation, though the content of the posts will be very similar to what regular readers are used to. Check out the link for more amazing bloggers, and enjoy April!
One of the themes in my most recent finished story is the difference between faith and knowledge. It’s kind of like the difference between opinion and fact, except to me it falls on a deeper level. It’s easy enough for Conner to say he knows gods exist. He’s spent the last 4,000 or so years surrounded by them.
That doesn’t mean he believes in what they represent or has any faith that they’ll leave him alone if their desires dictate otherwise.
I was going to go look up definitons for the two words, but that would kill the fun, right? So I’ll define them the way I think they’re defined, and possibly be a little off in the process.
Knowledge is information you have personally that has been proven to be true. For instance, I know that statistically, less than 1% of all authors querying literary agents and publishers are plucked from the pile, offered representation, and offere book deals. I have this knowledge based on a series of statistics that have been generated from actual happenings.
Faith is the belief that something can and/or will happen, even though you haven’t seen any ireffutable evidence. You can see things you assume are evidence, but it’s all circumstantial. Like people who keep querying and have faith that they’ll get picked from that pile.
Statistically the odds aren’t in their favor, the know that. But they have faith that with hard work, perseverance, and a little bit (or lot) of crimson-tinted sweat and tears, they can beat the odds.
The problem with faith is when knowledge starts to scream too loudly, sometimes belief is squashed. So, what do you do when what you know conflicts with what you’re trying so very intensely to believe?
How do you keep the faith when the odds are stacked against you?
Well, you can bury your head in the sand and refuse to see what’s in front of you, or you can look around and see what else YOU can do to make your dream happen.
Build new knowledge and search for an alternative solution or bolster your faith and just keep plugging along.
The problem with knowledge is that it only knows what HAS happened, not what CAN happen. So all it can do is make an educated guess about the future.
I think the missing middle link you’re going for here is wisdom. Knowledge knows what HAS happened. Faith knows what we WANT to happen. Wisdom knows HOW to get it to happen.
Them’s my definitions. 😉
Hey we have the same K word!
Anyone can have knowledge. It’s easy. It’s out there to grab. There’s loads of it just floating around, and it’s free for anyone.
Faith, on the other hand, that’s something special. And having faith in the face of adversity is something very special indeed. It takes a strong person to have faith.
Knowledge? Pah! What’s so special about that!!
Very good post. It can be hard. I’m not sure what I do to keep the faith. I’d say being somewhat realistic helps but what does that really mean. Knowledge gets us so far but sometimes we have to just not know something. I think.
I pretty much go with what I know, and work from there. 🙂
For every negative thing that happens to me, I always try to think of something positive in my life. It evens things out. 🙂