A Variety of Faiths — just not what you might think of…

We have a multitude of faiths in our nation. Some of them are traditional religious faiths — like Christianity. But also other faith traditions are here as well in this nation — Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and more are just a few examples.

And there are other non-traditional religious faiths that have many adherents in this nation. Some people have their faith in sports teams. Being a long time Buffalo Bills fan, that never really took hold for me — after watching my team fail in four Super Bowls straight, I don’t really have faith in them as much as I do a wish that some time they will win. It would be fun to be supportive of a winning team after all. Faith in a team can be a great thing. It’s not the same thing as religious faith of course. But it offers some things that religious faith claims — a sense of hopeful expectation, a sense of identity with others who believe, a vision of triumph or the “good guys” being victorious. Those types of things. Nothing bad there.

There are other types of faiths too. Faith in our economic system. This starts to get a bit more fuzzy in relation to religious faith whether we want to admit it or not. There could be whole books written about how our faith in financial systems and money causes us problems. For some, their faith in a human-made economic system has religious overtones to it. Some even claim that our economic system is divinely inspired. No economic system is divinely inspired. They all have problems. They all have abuses. They all have some…