What Does It Mean To Have Faith? The Non-Religious Sector

Don't freak out. This isn't some long article expressing God-this, religion-that. This isn't going to encourage you to start attending church or even to become a better person, though the idea of those types of things could be seen as something positive. Regardless, that's not what I'm here to discuss.

I've spent a lot of time really trying to focus on positive energy in my life, and its that positive energy that I've become accustomed to believing is my version of faith. But how do other people view faith? What exactly is it? And why is it perceived the way it is?


Faith is trust, assurance and confidence in God. Living faith is shown by service and obedience to God. God will increase our faith if we fervently ask and draw close to Him.
Or at least that's what some people think it is. But what really is faith? Simply, faith is putting complete trust or confidence in someone or something. It doesn't necessarily have to be a God or Higher Power, but something. The expression “just have faith, it will work out” is often used by people to encourage and comfort someone facing serious problems or stressful situations.

It’s important to point out that faith doesn’t necessarily have to involve religion – as indicated by the definition mentioned above – and can just indicate a close affiliation or trust in someone, some organization, or some movement, such as a parent, a political party, or even a football team.

Belief is a product of the mind, but faith is not. Faith is a product of the spirit. The mind interferes in the process of faith more than it contributes to it. To have faith in the worst of times will no doubt require us to silence, or at least quiet, the mind. Faith is what happens when our beliefs run aground. The spirit can be buoyed by our beliefs, but can also be brought down by them when they prove inadequate, as they most certainly will at some point in the journey. Even the beliefs humans have held most closely have come and gone over the course of a lifetime or a millennium. Think of Galileo.

We can believe an abstract truth, but as a result of our human limitations, we can never really know. And even our individual experiences with the same truth can collide. In time, as new spiritual and cultural information is revealed, former so-called truths can be revealed as arbitrary, false or irrelevant; i.e., slavery, polygamy, gender and race inequality, and previously sanctioned abuses by social, political and religious authorities. Beliefs come and go, but real faith is not so fickle. Real faith is not a statement of beliefs, but a state of being. It is living life midair — standing commando on a tightrope fifty stories up with no preconception of the outcome. It is trusting beyond all reason and evidence that you have not been abandoned.

Since faith is conceptual until it is put into play, it is best achieved through commitment. To commit to faith is not the same as committing to a set of beliefs. In the throes of crisis it is impossible to know what the unknowable God and/or universe is really asking of us. But in the void of not knowing, we may ask: Is it God at all who asks this of me? Or circumstance? The answer of faith: It doesn’t matter. You don’t know now and you may never know. To not know in the context of faith is to remain humble and teachable. To toss away the conflicting and unusable beliefs of the mind is to be free of human chatter and hubris and a step closer to the divine. Where faith does not fill in the cracks, fear will. Faith is an attitude of acceptance of not knowing.
Knowing does not create faith. Unknowing does.

We've All Got Options

Catholic, Born-Again, Reformed, Jew, Muslim, Shiite, Sunni, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist . . . .  Religions give people labels. The downside can be tribalism, an assumption that insiders are better than outsiders, that they merit more compassion, integrity and generosity or even that violence toward “infidels” is acceptable. But the upside is that religious or spiritual labels offer a way of defining who we are.  They remind adherents that our moral sense and quest for meaning are core parts of what it means to be human.  They make it easier to convey a subset of our deepest values to other people, and even to ourselves.

For those who have lost their religion or never had one, finding a label can feel important.  It can be part of a healing process or, alternately, a way of declaring resistance to a dominant and oppressive paradigm.  Finding the right combination of words can be a challenge though.  For a label to fit it needs to resonate personally and also communicate what you want to say to the world.  Words have definitions, connotations and history, and how people respond to your label will be affected by all three.  What does it mean?  What emotions does it evoke?  Who are you identifying as your intellectual and spiritual forebears and your community?  The differences may be subtle but they are important.

If, one way or another, you’ve left religion behind, and if you’ve been unsure what to call yourself, you might try on one of these for size

          1. Atheist.

The term atheist can be defined literally as lacking a humanoid god concept, but historically it means one of two things. Positive atheism asserts that a personal supreme being does not exist. Negative atheism simply asserts a lack of belief in such a deity. It is possible be a positive atheist about the Christian God, for example, while maintaining a stance of negative atheism or even uncertainty on the question of a more abstract deity like a “prime mover.” In the United States, it is important to know that atheist may be the most reviled label for a godless person. Devout believers use it as a slur and many assume an atheist has no moral core. Until recently calling oneself an atheist was an act of defiance. That appears to be changing. With the rise of the “New Atheists” and the recent atheist visibility movement, the term is losing its edge.  

          2. Anti-theist.

When atheist consistently evoked images of Madeline Murray O’Hare, hostility toward religion was assumed. Now that it may evoke a white-haired grandmother at the Unitarian church or the gay kid on Glee, some people want a term that more clearly conveys their opposition to the whole religious enterprise. The term anti-theist says, “I think religion is harmful.” It also implies some form of activism that goes beyond merely advocating church-state separation or science education. Anti-theism challenges the legitimacy of faith as a moral authority or way of knowing. Anti-theists often work to expose harms caused in the name of God like stonings, gay bating, religious child maltreatment, genital mutilation, unwanted childbearing or black-collar crime. The New Atheist writers including Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins might better be described as anti-theists.

          3. Agnostic.

Some atheists think of agnostic as a weenie term, because it gets used by people who lack a god-concept but don’t want to offend family members or colleagues. Agnostic doesn’t convey the same sense of confrontation or defiance that atheist can, and so it gets used as a bridge. But in reality, the term agnostic represents a range of intellectual positions that have important substance in their own right and can be independent of atheism. Strong agnosticism views God’s existence as unknowable, permanently and to all people. Weak agnosticism can mean simply “I don’t know if there is a God,” or “We collectively don’t know if there is a God but we might find out in the future.” Alternately, the term agnosticism can be used to describe an approach to knowledge, somewhat like skepticism (which comes next in this list). Philosopher Thomas Huxley illustrates this position:

Agnosticism is not a creed but a method, the essence of which lies in the vigorous application of a single principle... Positively the principle may be expressed as ‘in matters of intellect, do not pretend conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable.’

These three definitions of agnosticism, though different, all focus on what we do or can know, rather than on whether God exists. This means it is possible to be both atheist and agnostic. Author Phillip Pullman has described himself as both.

The question of what term to use is a difficult one, in strict terms I suppose I'm an agnostic because of course the circle of the things I do know is vastly smaller than the things I don't know about out there in the darkness somewhere maybe there is a God. But among all the things I do know in this world I see no evidence of a God whatsoever and everybody who claims to know there is a God seems to use that as an excuse for exercising power over other people, and historically as we know from looking at the history in Europe alone that's involved persecution, massacre, slaughter on an industrial scale, it's a shocking prospect. 

          4. Skeptic.

Traditionally, skeptic has been used to describe a person who doubts received religious dogmas. However, while agnostic focuses on God questions in particular, the term skeptic expresses a broader life approach. Someone who calls him- or herself a skeptic has put critical thinking at the heart of the matter. Well known skeptics, like Michael Shermer, Penn and Teller, or James Randi devote a majority of their effort to debunking pseudoscience, alternative medicine, astrology and so forth. They broadly challenge the human tendency to believe things on insufficient evidence. Australian comic Tim Minchen is an outspoken atheist who earns a living in part by poking fun at religion. But his most beloved and hilarious beat poem, Storm, smacks down homeopathy and hippy woo.

Even though I don’t have faith in a particular god or religion, I think it’s important for everyone, regardless of belief system, to have faith. I believe that in a world with so much darkness and evil, sometimes we need faith to get through that. As we watch hours of tragedy and crime on the news, we need to cling to the idea that there is still happiness and love in the world. We need to cling to it like our lives depend on it, because they kind of do. As we hear the names of victim after victim of shootings and bombings and death, faith is the thing that keeps us from locking ourselves in our rooms.

There is a possibility of death at any moment, if you really think about it. Whether on accident or on purpose (your purpose or that of someone else), there are millions of times each day that you could die. But you haven’t, and you most likely will keep living. Even with the huge threat of sadness and hurt that constantly looms, we have faith that there is something bigger that will beat out the sadness. And even if it doesn’t beat out the sadness, it’s big enough for us to have faith that it might.

We have faith that the sun will rise each morning, even though there are millions of reasons it couldn’t. We have faith that the people we love will continue to love us back, despite all the things we do to annoy them. We have faith that even in a time with so much hate, there are enough good people to make love worth it. I may not have faith in a god, but I have great, abounding amounts of faith in life and love and art and so many other things around me. Even when life sucks worse than I could ever imagine, and I can’t see anything good through my cloudy vision, I have faith that if I stumble through it, there is something wonderful coming up.

Notice here that faith isn't a 100-yard dash or a quick sprint around the track. No, the race of faith is a marathon. It requires a steady, daily dependence on trust. When you put the positive energy out into the world it does repay you back. That's the beauty of faith. Staying uplifted makes it so much easier to see the good in people, society, and the world. Do you think that you that you're practicing good faith?  Here are a few tips on how to start!

Practice Makes Perfect

Everyone has heard this age old phrase, "practice makes perfect", but does it really apply to literally everything? OF COURSE IT DOES! I mean, how else do you expect to get good at things? It takes 21 days to create a habit. If you can commit to positively practicing for 21 days, soon it will be 2nd nature! Don't know where to start? Good thing I'm here to help.

          1. Look For Something Positive

We recognize that what we look for is what we tend to see. So, instead of looking for an outcome that is negative or some flaw, look for something positive that can be beneficial or add to your life, rather than diminish an area of its worth. By shifting to search for happiness, you can create it.

          2. Think Of The Bigger Picture

Consider the bigger picture when forming a perspective on something, says Goldberg, and think of how this one perspective or area of focus and hold up within the larger picture or real-world effects. "By widening our lens to the bigger picture we begin to see things more clearly. As if instead of seeing the individual walls in a maze, we suddenly see it from above in it’s entirety," Goldberg says.

          3. Show Gratitude

According to a 2005 study from the University of Pennsylvania, showing gratitude can make you feel more satisfied with where you are in life and the people and situations you surround yourself with. If you're feeling negative, think of something that you're grateful for in order to focus on something that gives you joy and can banish the worries and moodiness.

          4. Write Down Negative Thoughts

Take a look at the beliefs and thoughts you focus on and how they impact your mood. Take note of the ones that make you feel sad, negative or stuck. Writing down these thoughts can be therapeutic, as it's a way of distancing them once written (you can even throw out the paper when done!). Its an easy step to learn how to let go.


Even if you don't know it, you most likely have faith in something, even if you can't admit it. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you have faith. Whether it be in a higher power, in a person, or in yourself, that faith is what helps everyone drive on. And THAT is all that it takes to get through this crazy world that we live in.