Personal Discovery: Change your Relationship with Faith

Faith and our deep abiding belief in it can become a solid foundation in our lives that also enhances our understanding of our world and our place in it. Many of us desire a deeper relationship with it and to give it greater priority in our lives. We desire to have a more personal connection but don’t know where to start or how to move forward.

We first need to understand what makes it up. For faith to become a foundation in our lives, we need to understand the foundations of our faith. Go to the nearby place of worship and ask about the foundations of faith. Most have them in an easy-to-read pamphlet along with any number of eager people to explain it. What basic tenets make it up? What are the basics of belief you must have in order to call yourself a part of that faith? Understand enough that you are able to be able to articulate it clearly to another person who has no idea of your faith and still have them understand what you are talking about. Different beliefs often have a lot of terms that we can take for granted but are otherwise meaningless to those outside the belief. Get to know what these terms really mean and be able to explain it clearly. Only in this way, can you truly understand what makes up your beliefs.

Now, we expand our knowledge in two ways. We can go deeper into it and we can also go broader into it. To go deeper into our beliefs, we build upon the foundation. It’s like making a soup. The foundation was the water for without water, it isn’t a soup. Then, next we add what should go into the soup that gives it distinctive flavor: the vegetables, the meats, the spices and flavorings. To do this, we read the holy writings, we integrate the practices in our lives, we spend time thinking quietly in order to come to understand more and more of what it is. We immerse ourselves into it, learning as much as we can about what it is exactly and how it transforms our life. It’s a private communication between you and your beliefs.

To go broader into your faith is to add the side dishes that put the soup into context and make it into a meal. To do this, we learn about the history and the noted people who have been a part of the same beliefs, we read other people’s writings, and discuss with others about their thoughts. We open our focus to how our faith has impacted others and the world we live in.

Understanding our beliefs can be a lifelong process as most things in our lives. However, while we learn more and more, we need to remain in conversation with ourselves by analyzing what we are learning and seeing how this changes the way we react to ourselves and to other people. Are we finding what we need? What needs to change? It is okay to question your own beliefs to make sure you completely understand why you believe what you do. Once that happens, we know why we can hold firm to our beliefs and so our faith grows even in the face of detractors. If we don’t understand why we believe, we may fall away easier because we don’t know where to hold firm.

Sometimes, something we believe may actually be detrimental to us. It causes us to treat others and to treat ourselves in a way that we don’t like or is harmful. When this happens, we need to take a step back and first decide whether it’s because we are misinterpreting our beliefs. If we are, then we need to figure out where we went wrong. Again, this goes back to whether or not we understand what our beliefs truly are. Go back and talk to the leaders of your faith or others you trust that are knowledgeable in your beliefs. Go back and think things through for yourself on a personal level. Seek after what the truth is. If you believe that you have found the truth and it still sits heavy on you, you need to seriously think about whether or not your beliefs are wrong. There is no one else in this world that can answer this for you. Only you will know whether your beliefs are true or not and only you can decide whether or not to believe them.

Your faith is an integral part of your life and your identity. It is profoundly personal and yet has a far-reaching impact on the world around you. To change your relationship to faith is akin to changing your relationship with not only yourself, but something beyond yourself, and that is quite an important choice to make. Your mind can only do so much. Ultimately, go with your heart and your soul, go with what you feel is right and true and have faith that you have reached the right conclusion.