timberlandko wrote:Well, CerealKiller, if and when that universally recognizeable, unambiguous, indisputable something should come to pass, then cool. It has not yet, nor, despite the assertions of a particular collection of religionist sects, is there reason to assume it may. A universal, absolute truth by definition cannot be conditional ... evident to some but not to others, for instance. Would you care to attempt to delineate, in purely secular, academic terms, WITHOUT REFERENCE TO JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURE, the difference between "Faith" and "Superstition"?
Fuzzy as the distinction between superstition and faith may seem to be, I'll give it a shot.
My short answer is superstition is fear based and egocentrically driven, in other words I should obey God because there is something in it for me.
Faith puts God first and isn't selfish. It doesn't ask how can God be relevant to me,it asks how can I be relevant to God. It acts out of confidence not fear.
Religiously tinged superstition, for example, is chiefly concerned with making God relevant to me, to come up with ways to get what I want from God. That may be by impressing God with my goodness, or persuading God with my pleading, or obligating God through gifts and sacrifices, but superstitious hope is, that something like that will “work.” Faith, instead of being about God’s relevance to me, is about my relevance to God. It doesn’t have to do with how God can be made to fit my purposes, but rather, how and where do I fit God’s purposes.
Prayer then, in superstitious religion, is done in hopes of changing the mind of God, informing God of what really needs to be done that God hasn’t gotten around to doing or had forgotten about. Prayer as a part of faith has overwhelmingly to do with recognizing, and with grappling with the need for change in me.
Religious superstition is typically pursued out of a wish to make life more secure, predictable, and nice. Very much in contrast, faith (at least as revealed in Jesus), is an appetite for living life as a “raw adventure:” open-ended, dynamic, unpredictable and out on the edge. In other words, while religious superstition hopes to find a divine way to “keep the boat from rocking,” faith, at least in part, is a kind of grace and trust that makes one able to function in a “rocking boat.“
Similarly, religious superstition is often driven by the hope that there is a religious gimmick or strategy by which to dodge most sorrow and trouble, and/or will furnish a mystic anesthetic so that we won’t much feel what trouble or sorrow we cannot avoid. Here too, faith is almost the opposite. It is the conviction that there is real work to be done in the dark valleys: good to be unfolded, meaning to be discovered, growth to happen. It’s not, mind you, that the person of faith likes to suffer any more than do the superstitious. When it is there, though, they embrace it as a valid part of living rather than blindly enduring it as a divine insult or a cosmic injustice, seen as an indication that God or religion or the cosmos has failed them.
Superstitious religiousness makes a life of perpetual cautiousness--as if we were walking across some kind of mine field. It is the religious version of “If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.” In this case, “stepping on a crack” would mean things like having religious doubts, questioning traditions, not crossing every religious “t” and failing to dot every religious “i.” It is that god-awful picture in which God is always poised to punish minutiae that’s been left undone. Real faith, meanwhile, knows and trusts God as being infinitely larger, far more open, and genuinely excited about the searchings, explorings, and adventures of our minds and spirits, always working with us, not as our adversary.
I have the same religous doubts and struggle with all the same biblical contradictions as all of you, but I listen and live by my faith and it says wait on the Lord and lean not on your own understanding.
