Thursday, February 04, 2010

faith or confidence?


I had a discussion with a friend not too long ago about faith vs confidence. I think it started over a comment about having the faith to know you can do something that may seemingly be out of your reach. My argument was that faith is believing in what you cannot see, what cannot be proven; that confidence is what makes you believe you can climb that mountain or write that book or build that building. His argument was that "you have to have faith in your abilities".

What is your definition of faith?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Deep stuff, girl. Sometimes I wonder how similar our arguments really are, rather than how different they are. Could you both be right?

My faith has changed over the years and I expect it to be changed again. Things I embraced in the past I do not seem to hold as tightly. It feel I walk through life with more confidence than my younger years and probably due to life experiences. I'm also aware of abilities within me I never knew about or wanted to acknowledge. I agree it is good to have faith in the abilities we know about? But, why can't we have faith in abilities we do not know about yet? We all have gifts we need to offer the world so I now try and present them to those who will accept them. That alone takes confidence. And, what unknown gifts do we yet have to present?

One last thought. Are faith and confidence both gifts?

My purpose was not to provide an answer but more of my morning thoughts. Who knows what I will feel tomorrow. Hugs!

Faye White said...

Thank you for your thoughtful response, Monte. I think that faith and confidence are indeed gifts... just as are compassion, love and honesty.