Do people have faith? I’m not referring to religious faith (though we’re going to include some data on that because religion is an indicator of faith) but rather a more secular definition: the belief in the potential for positive outcomes without or despite evidence. Looking at the news, it seems like we’re losing faith—of all forms. For example, a recent Pew Research Center poll found that a median of 70% of individuals across 19 countries would be worse off financially than their parents. Similarly, a Gallup poll tracking religious faith has shown steady declines from near-universal religious belief to only 78% (22% no religion; note: depending on the question, a respondent might answer differently depending on whether the question was if they were not religious vs. they were an atheist). When you add watching the news reports about lower marriage rates (a decent indicator that you have faith in a lifetime relationship) and pessimistic expectations about retirement income and the direction of the country, one might think that faith is going away across the board.
But, as you know, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. What I just did above is what news reports do to get you to draw a specific conclusion. Since we don’t do that here, there are plenty of opposing data to this narrative. First of all, people consistently rate their future as being more positive than their present, shown in a Gallup poll on life satisfaction today vs. in the future with most people rating their future 5 years from now better. Additionally, there is a bias on individual optimism vs. societal, as people will consistently rate their lives as improving even if they might rate societal well-being as declining. So people’s belief in a positive future for themselves (which, if it holds steady regardless of what is going on societally, indicates faith) tends to hold steady regardless of circumstances.
So, then, when people talk about having a “crisis of faith”, what are they talking about? They are generally talking about things to believe in. And that is the topic of today’s post. So, what is there to believe in, anyway? Well, that’s what people typically mean as a “crisis of faith”—the classic things that led people to believe in a better future than present are, in fact, declining. Religion, marriage, and purposeful work are all examples of what gave people faith for centuries. Marriage rates were over 90%, people had children and so had to put on a strong face no matter what, and they always had a partner that they could depend on. Additionally, life was hard with little time for leisure, so there was not a lot of time to pontificate what life was all about. That work was very purposeful, as coal mining lead to having heat and electricity, house building led to shelter and homes to protect people, and car building was synonymous with giving people freedom. Life has never been easy (and it would be boring if it was), but it has long been filled with purpose and things and people to believe in.
To categorize the two elements that are causing this “crisis”, there are two primary types of faith being discussed here: greater belief and meaning in life, and personal belief and meaning in one’s day-to-day lives. If you zoom out like I did above and see that in the grand scheme of things people are the same as they always were, you would probably conclude that things are the same as they always had; if you zoom in, however, to the areas listed above that gave people faith, you might see rising concern that requires new things to believe in. It’s that piece that we want to look at and, hopefully, come to some ideas about.
There is no doubt that religious belief is on the decline. Now, the New Atheists would see this as a good thing to overcome what they believe to be the mass delusion of society. However, many people, including recently prominent members of the New Atheist movement, have realized the problem with binary thinking: if you take away someone’s faith, something has to fill the void. And many recent events have indicated what void is trying to be filled and what people are filling it with:
Faith in a Higher Power – Replacements for Religious Ideology
It has become very, very apparent that everyone needs to have a worldview to make sense of their reality. For millennia, the most unifying worldview was belief in a higher power, which led to people following similar ethics and rules for society and getting along through those common beliefs and interests. As religious faith declines, there are competing worldviews, primarily degrees of individualism and collectivism, that vie for people’s attention and belief. The reason for this is simple: your foundational worldview includes fundamentals like whether people are inherently good, neutral, or bad, to what degree an individual has the freedom to do things vs. being beholden to the group, and what rules would lead to the most growth and prosperity amongst individuals and society. When countries had unified fundamental beliefs, governmental squabbles were around tariffs and trade agreements; with splintering beliefs, squabbles are now over whether to take 10% of your income or 90%. In the former, worldview divisions are not hugely consequential to someone’s day-to-day life, but in the latter could literally be life or death.
Speaking of day-to-day lives, that’s the other “crisis” going on right now: what people are supposed to be doing and striving for. This includes the other elements I described earlier: whether you get married and/or have children, which job you pursue, and what you are working toward in your future. Since the near-universal way to live is fading, we now have a void there that needs to be filled. Unfortunately, the replacements aren’t as compelling:
Faith in a Better Future for Oneself – Replacements for Individual Life Satisfaction
It has become very apparent that many of these societal institutions were giving people personal fulfillment as well, and as society has tried to normalize deviations from these—such as through decriminalizing deviant-from-the-norm behavior and showing those lifestyles more in media—they accidentally created millions of new dissatisfied people because now the previous sources of meaning are less easily obtained.
Now, most people writing about the above would take one side or the other—either bring back the old institutions or burn them down and dive head-first into these replacements. Of course, you know if you read this blog that I don’t do that. Instead, what I want to do here is point out the solution to this “crisis” is to find healthy replacements for your faith and meaning in life. So, I’m going to list all of the healthier sources of meaning and purpose that you can find, including those old and new:
Sources of Faith and Meaning
When you leverage the above things or ideas, you can begin to find meaning and faith in your life. I’m not the one to tell you which of these will work for you, but I can tell you based on recent trends that if you don’t find faith in meaning in one or more of these, you will likely begin a downward spiral of cynicism, hedonism, nihilism, pessimism, and possible destructive behaviors. And that is not good for you. So do whatever you can to look through these and other positive sources and look for two things:
If you can’t find those two things in something that makes your life better…you will end up turning to ideologies, causes, and other sources that will lead you to fight others and try to destroy them rather than making your life any better. You will blame everyone but yourself for your life state, and so it will never get any better. And without faith or meaning, you won’t see the point in doing anything constructive because it won’t seem to matter or make a difference. That is very dangerous, and it’ll ruin your life. So overcome the crisis of faith by finding something to have faith in, and we’ll solve this crisis, one person at a time.