Faith

There is an aphorism that says something to the effect of: “If you have a ‘why’, you can bear almost any ‘how’.” You could compile a healthy list of thinkers who have made this observation, but this raises a question: What kinds of “why’s” are the most potent? Love, duty, and ambition come to mind, but it seems that there is nothing that contends with faith.

Faith has shown itself to have a staggering capacity to bolster our efforts to combat seemingly insurmountable hurdles. One example that always struck me is its crucial role in combating addiction, which, it goes without saying, is amongst the most daunting struggles the human mind can contend with. Alcoholics Anonymous, for instance, anchors its success in urging participants to surrender to a “higher power.” While the 12-step program isn’t exclusively theological, its founder, Bill Wilson, insisted that faith is central, and studies suggest that those who embrace this dimension achieve higher rates of long-term sobriety than secular alternatives. Addiction aside, data suggests that people suffering from chronic illness, the loss of a loved one, PTSD, depression, and anxiety all report having better mental states than their secular counterparts.

So, we can say with a degree of confidence that those who have faith are more likely to be successful in their struggle with adversity. So I ask myself: Why? And what does this say about humans and their relationship with struggle?

Before diving in, I should say that this essay is not a treatise and anything I write here is not going to adequately address the entire breadth of faith’s relationship with the human mind. But, with that being said, I hope that even this cursory little investigation will yield some insights. Also, with regards to my relationship with faith: I don’t subscribe to any religious creed, and while I wouldn’t call myself an atheist, the idea of a deity who is managing and monitoring the affairs of humankind has never been convincing to me.  Yet even from this position, faith’s power fascinates me, not as doctrine, but as a psychological scaffold.

Anyways.

Faith sidesteps reason. It offers a narrative untethered to evidence, a framework immune to the shifting sands of logic or societal norms. This is its strength. I’ve often seen believers argue for their faith through reasoned arguments, arriving at a conclusion that “makes sense”. But this strikes me as an error. If faith is arrived at through deduction, isn’t it just a reasonably held conclusion, not faith at all? Kierkegaard explores this best when he distinguished the “soldier of faith” from the “tragic hero.”

Kierkegaard’s example of a tragic hero, Agammemnon, kills his daughter to appease the gods so that they may produce the winds necessary to sail to Troy. The act is horrific, but it nonetheless is enacted in accordance within his cultural framework. In other words, his society understands him. Abraham, the “soldier of faith,” operates differently. When God commands him to sacrifice Isaac, he obeys not for a tangible reward, but because faith demands it. There’s no terrestrial logic here, no moral code to parse to justify the act. Abraham’s resolve defies reason, existing in what Kierkegaard calls the “paradox of faith”: he holds two irreconcilable truths (love for his son, devotion to God) and acts anyway, trusting in a higher reconciliation. Faith, here, doesn’t clarify but directs.

So, we see how faith acts as a bountiful fount from which a person can generate strength, clarity, and conviction. To push this point further, we must also consider the enervating effects of doubt. Neurophysiological evidence shows us that those who suffer from chronic indecision and doubt have spikes of cortisol, and frayed nerves which correlate with softened resolve. The secular mind, tasked with crafting meaning from chaos, often buckles under the weight of its own freedom. Faith spares believers this hurdle. In a world steeped in uncertainty, it offers what doubt cannot: a foundation. There’s no need to draft a personal code or dissect moral dilemmas; the path is set, the rules established. When adversity is met, bandwidth isn’t wasted on existential bargaining and instead flows outward, into action.

This isn’t to say faith is flawless. Its imperviousness can calcify into dogma, and history is abundant with horrors enacted from unyielding conviction. Yet for the individual grappling with private struggles, faith’s certainty (even if illusory) often mobilizes where doubt paralyzes.

So, why faith? Because we crave narratives that bring shape and structure to suffering and uncertainty. Love and ambition falter because they’re rooted in the provisional; faith endures because it is story, not strategy. Kierkegaard’s Abraham doesn’t triumph despite the absurdity of his task, but because of it. His faith, irrational and unyielding, is the ultimate “why.” It whispers: This pain is not random. This chaos is not yours to parse. Act.

Part of me will forever balk at many of faith’s claims, but I also can’t help but recognize the benefits. Faith, in the end, is a shelter where the mind can dwell, sparing us the exhaustion of drafting blueprints in the storm.