Fear vs Faith

35. Fear vs Faith

Fear and faith. Two ways of looking at reality. In fear, we anticipate a negative outcome. In faith, we anticipate a positive one. Neither approach guarantees anything, but it may be that our attitude does somehow influence the outcome. In extreme cases we call this a “self-fulfilling prophesy” -- for example, someone who, being convinced that no one likes them, carries a chip on their shoulder so that indeed, no one likes them.

Probably most of us, however, bounce back and forth between these two attitudes. When we get in our car and drive down the freeway, we probably have faith we’re going to reach our destination, and are not preoccupied with having a major collision. Being talked into bungee jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge by a group of friends, however, might arouse in us a bit of trepidation. Still, we would have to have more faith than fear or we would never jump, right?

So maybe the attitude of faith has something to do with knowledge gained from experience. Enough trips down the freeway with no collisions and we begin to have faith that this is a safe thing to do. After all, we live in a pretty reliable world, where if we follow the rules – obey speed limits, make sure you’re going in the direction of traffic, etc. – then the outcomes tend to be fairly consistent. There’s always the outlier, the occasional exception, but it is just that: the exception.