When the Answer is the Problem

"In times like these, only our Faith will get us through".

Over and over again I hear that and have heard it my whole life- any time there's a terrible (fill in the blank) exploding and oozing with senseless violence and the harming of innocents almost before anyone realizes what's happened people start to say it

"In times like these, only our Faith will get us through".

And I tried. I tried to lean on my Faith, reach for my Faith, drown in my Faith enough to squelch the pain and dim the horror but it never happened.

It never happened because there was always a little voice in my heart that wouldn't let me close my eyes to the fact that for every one looking to their Faith as solace in terrible times

every one who had committed the atrocities seemed to have also pulled courage and boldness enough out of their Faith to follow through with seemingly super-human and super-villain actions.

And I can't help but think that turning to Faith is not what we need to do.

How about turning to each other?

How about keeping our eye on the people in front of us instead of to the sky and a supposed creator?

It may seem less grandiose to do something "for the good of society" or "because my neighbor needs help" than "for the glory of god" but seriously- society and our neighbors need us; I'm guessing god can fix his own shit.

I can't help but think that the blind Faith needed to set off a bomb, or start a fire, or begin shooting into unarmed crowds of human beings would not be quite as determined if the directive came from Steve, or Peggy, or Hamid and not from GOD or ALLAH.

If we were to take Faith completely out of the equation- the people of action would be less driven and fanatical and those witnessing it or experiencing it would be more apt to freaking actually help someone rather than fall onto their knees and ask GOD to do it.

My contention, then, is NOT

"In times like these, only our Faith will get us through"

but

"In times like these, only each other will get us through the evils that Faith has wrought".