What Faith as a Value Means to Me

Core Action Value #6 in our course on The Twelve Core Action Values is Faith. Sunday’s Promise of The Self Empowerment Pledge is Faith.

When I speak of faith as a value that you act upon (the “action” part of The Twelve Core Action Values) and as a promise you make to yourself in The Self Empowerment Pledge, I am not referring to religious belief or dogma. I am referring to the faith we all need, regardless of our religious beliefs or non-belief.

In the PledgePower course on The Self Empowerment Pledge I speak of faith as being the marriage of fidelity and trust – a marriage that requires commitment and courage.

Faith is fidelity to something – a cause, another person, an organization, anything else that is important to you. It also means fidelity to yourself (be true to yourself, said Shakespeare, and you’ll never be false to anyone else). Fidelity takes commitment.

And faith is trust in something – a leader, an organization, a prescription, anything else that is important to you. Including trusting yourself. Trusting takes courage.

In the PledgePower course I also cover what I call the four pillars of faith: faith in yourself, faith in other people, faith in the future, and faith in something greater than what’s visible in the material world – what some people call a higher power and others call God.

In our course on The Twelve Core Action Values the Cornerstones of Core Action Value #6, Faith, are Gratitude, Forgiveness, Love and Spirituality. Again, these are fundamental qualities of character strength, not tenets of any particular religious dogma.

Real faith is more than a feeling – it’s the hard work required to act with fidelity and to earn trust. It’s the hard work of being grateful for what you have instead of being resentful for what you don’t have; of forgiving when it is much easier to hate; of loving your enemies as well as your friends; and of knowing that you are not the center of the universe and there is so much more beyond the horizon of your mortal perceptions.

One more thing about faith: it is just beginning at the point where certainty ends. Faith is fidelity to a cause with no guarantee that the cause will be successful. It is trust in another person with no guarantee that individual deserves your trust. It is gratitude when there is no guarantee that your desires will be fulfilled, forgiveness for people who do not deserve forgiveness, love for people who do not deserve love, and spirituality in the dark nights of the soul when there is no certainty that the sun will shine again.

Faith is not just something you feel – it is something you do. Faith is more than belief – faith is hard work.