Faith v. Hope

If you have faith, you have belief. If you have hope, you are basing your belief on something resembling evidence. If your lost on a mountain and people know where you were going you can have hope you will be found. If no one knows where you are, you need to have faith you'll be found.

That faith may be nothing other than the gut feeling that it is not your time to go, or that some one for some reason will miss you and figure out where you are. The first case, for hope, is obviously better and I guess in most all cases I would opt for hope.

Faith gets into the illogical area of as my father used to say,"When your wishing in one hand and defecating in the other, you know which one will fill up first." Not a pleasant analogy and a commendation that might be too strong for the faithful, but it makes the point.

We all seem to have faith is something. I belief that our spouse will not cheat on us or lie. We have to believe, even the most sceptical of us, that mot people are honest. Why in God's name would we be giving out our credit card numbers on the phone or over the Internet if we didn't.
We have no proof that we won't get ripped off, but we believe we won't so we do. Maybe it's because we want that book or record so badly we're willing to forget or ignore the possibilities.

Hope sounds more vague and ethereal than faith. Faith in God sounds so much stronger than hope in God. But hope is usually based on evidence that things may work in our favor. We beat their team twice this season, so we should bet them again, shouldn't we? One would think that to be true, but in reality it's just hoping.

The lesson here? When you go mountain climbing, tell some one where you are going. If you do get lost, hoping for rescue is better than faith that you will.