“Faith” and Fundraising

Here's a train of thought having to do with religion as a stimulus for philanthropy and a motivation for engaging in the various activities of fundraising.

This was occasioned by my attendance at the memorial service of a friend. We heard things like: "He was a true father to me; he had pride in what I did and let me know how proud he was of what I ended up becoming." We heard things like, "He didn't need to 'find himself.' He already knew who he was. He had faith, family and friends in his corner at the end." Another speaker said, "He had faith that everything would turn out all right."

Faith seems necessary for living a life that has the attributes of productivity, an ability to give of self and many, well-rounded, mutually-fulfilling relationships with fellow human beings.

What is "faith" in this context? "Faith," as I presently understand it, is the ability to “see” the future, in that one sees the possibilities that can happen, the circumstances and the concomitant actions that can bring about those possibilities. "Faith" is also, then, the ability to dig in and work for those possibilities to happen, to meet adversity head-on, to overcome the blocks and barriers in one's path, all the while believing, knowing, "having faith" that the outcome will be positive and somewhat along the lines envisioned, even though one is in the midst of the unknown. "Faith" is the ability to keep applying one's better nature throughout life, to the various problems and situations of life, without dissembling, and without letting one's baser nature (fear, anger, greed, anxiety, warlike nature) have sway over one's thoughts and actions.

Those who have this quality of "faith" in a natural way seem to be rare. By “natural,” I mean not stimulated by religious dogma and training. If one is prompted by dogmatic proclamations that come from other peoples’ heads and by training that inculcates someone else’s thoughts, then that person’s “faith” is simply letting someone else do one’s thinking. Having a sense of security in an unknown future that comes from observation of the present, tempered by the internally generated understanding that the future can be better and the intuitional “guessing” that points to the probably characteristics of that future is what I mean here by “faith.”. Some of the other factors that affect one’s “faith view” might include nurturing and supportive parents, a leadership personality forged by trying and failing/succeeding at leadership, a strong self-will or self-discipline able to be applied in a positive direction rather than for war and mayhem.

The quality of faith seems to me to vary with the extent of one’s ability to look ahead and see the possibilities as well as the time, effort and resources it will take to realize them. This also demands a certain quality of persistence of the vision of faith. This is the understanding of the amount of hard work it’s going to take to bring the future into being, even in the face of personal or professional opposition, many blocks and barriers, and frequent events that seem to defeat the vision.

Let’s pause to think this over, and we’ll continue in the next post.