Do You Trust Your Faith?

An integral part of our identity as humans is that, when it comes to the future, we mostly just “don’t know.” We have plans and ideas and dreams about what we want to do, achieve, or become in our lives. Some people have meticulously-designed life plans and projects and roadmaps. Others at least have a general direction in which they foresee their lives evolving. And yet others are quite perplexed as they stare at the vast spectrum of possibilities before them and have no idea where to go next. In different moments in life, we have probably all been each of these three types of people. But, when it comes to certainty and really knowing what will happen or how our lives will turn out, we really simply “don’t know.”

And that’s where God comes in. It is no secret that the entire system of our religion is based on faith. All of the stories we are taught and understand form the basis of our religion are nothing if we don’t trust they are, in fact, true. We don’t have direct, falsifiable, absolutely irrevocable data on which to ground most of what we believe as Catholics. We have to believe these things on faith. The definition of faith is “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” In our case, that “someone” would be God. By this definition, our Catholic faith calls us to have “complete trust in God” in all things and at all times. But let’s stop for a minute—what is ‘trust’? The exact definition of trust is a “firm belief in the reliability, truth or ability of someone or something.” Our having complete trust in God means we must have a “firm belief in the reliability, truth or ability of God.” Our faith in God should be quite relentless and steady, but the issue is that—as humans—we sometimes forget to trust God, as weird as that may sound.

In some areas of life, we might be completely sure of our faith in God, for example, in following the Commandments, in going to Mass, in living virtuously, in learning from the Bible. There are other areas in which it might be easier to lose track of our trust and worry too much about our control over our own lives. Of course, it is true that we have free will and are not puppets jumping around being controlled by God, but we should remember that He knows us and where we are and where we’re going, now, forever, and always. While we are the agents of our lives, we should learn to trust, to have faith, and to firmly believe in the reliability, truth and ability of God and His will for each and every one of us. We don’t have certainty over our futures, but the good news is that we’re not supposed to have certainty over our futures. We just have to trust and have faith, and not lose trust in our faith.