Faith Exercised

Faith is believing without seeing. It is the acceptance of what reason cannot perceive. In the matter of religion, it is undeniable that a great number of believers are unable to formulate reasons for their belief or to express verbally what they firmly stand. Yet believing is a principle of action. It does not need demonstrations as science does, it is an act of putting it into action.

If for instance faith were synonymous with scientific knowledge, there would be very few true believers. Only a handful of men that can reason out their belief are called as such. They would be identical with theologians and even philosophers who are always "hungry" for unexplained reasonableness of a thing. In fact, to demand a scientific demonstration of faith is unreal because this is based on the idea of how the mind ought to behave instead of investigating how it actually did.

Simple people, as a general rule, never try to question the validity of their faith. Simply because there is no need for them to do so. Thus, they are looked down upon because of their strong hold of their inner faith. Yet, we can say that faith is a personal conviction as knowledge is.

Faith then is an act of the mind exercised by reason. It does not have to be explicit to be reasonable. Implicit reasoning alone is an intellectual act complete in itself.