Assurance: The Wisdom of Faith vs. Fanaticism

Faith in something or someone has been shown by research studies, as well as by historical evidence, to give people resilience and endurance in the face of difficult and even extreme challenges. This includes dealing with illness, loss and disaster, as well as when achieving victory in activities as diverse as sports, science, charity and political causes. That is why I consider assurance or faith one of The 7 Dimensions of Wisdom. However, we also know from current news of terrorism as well as from history that faith (belief in any cause) can easily turn into fanaticism; with destructive consequences up to and including murder and genocide. Given that faith of any kind is essentially irrational, how do we distinguish the positive and life-giving kind of faith; from the deadly or delusional?

Faith is not limited to religion, as people can hold strong beliefs in just about anything. But since religion is where faith is most easily seen, I will use that as an example in discussing the differences between positive and negative faith. God has been used to justify just about any atrocity one can imagine. We are all familiar with the radical form of Islam that justifies suicide bombers killing people indiscriminately. A similar kind of thinking is also found in parts of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible or the Jewish Torah. When the Israelites settled in Canaan, God supposedly directed them to kill all the previous inhabitants, including women, children and animals. One can therefore find justification for extremism in just about any religion or belief system. This line of thought led me to ask in a song I wrote a few years ago:

If my Bible is the perfect truth,
And your Koran is the same to you,
Is God then on my side alone?
Or is God on your side too?

Whether we are talking about religious faith, or faith in some other idea, thing or person, its creative and destructive capacities are determined by the extent to which it does or does not allow for the existence of different beliefs. At the most destructive end of the scale, we have what I call the stage of Domination or Annihilation. Here only we have value or truth, and everyone else is a liar, evil, and deserving of destruction. At the next stage in the development of faith is Tolerance. With Tolerance, we do not necessarily see much value in beliefs other than our own, and we have no real interest in learning about them, but we are willing to let the people who hold them continue to exist. That may not seem like much progress, but it is a very big step in terms of the potential for the survival of humanity.

Beyond Tolerance, we can move to another level of development that I call Engagement. With Engagement, we are actually interested in people who think differently from ourselves and pursue opportunities to learn from each other. Through this process of Engagement, we eventually come to understand that essential humanity that underlies differences in beliefs, and we reach the stage that I call Universality.

What does this mean in terms of self-development or leadership development, beyond religion? First, it is important to believe in and be passionate about something. One cannot achieve fulfillment or much of anything in life without this. However, one’s passion for a particular idea, thing or person should be matched by interest in and curiosity about how other people view the world; with the understanding that we only have a future to the extent that it is built upon a shared vision.