Faith, actual *faith* in RPGaming

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Those are all possible events though. Nothing supernatural. It's more like asking do you have faith that your daughter won't sprout wings, or your love interest's human mask fall off to reveal an interdimensional alien.
I trust my love won't cheat on me, because I have evidence of her past behavior for the last 18 years.
And neither trust nor faith are hopes or guesses like me saying what color eyes you have.

We will accept your presumption of evidence though I suspect that you just have faith in reason and so are making excuses for yourself for those moments when in fact you are demanding investigatory discipline for yourself in the wrong context. Which is not really to the point.

But the point is that when the word was made it would have meant what it meant to the hearers which is roughly the same as I described even if only by analogy. It is not what I would mean by "faith" in the theological context because there was no theological context. Faith is something of a postpagan idea. Zeus did not demand faith of people as we know it. He demanded an homage that was subtly different from it which involved rote performance rather then faith. Many Theological concepts are metaphors because there was not a word for them when they arrived. Even the term "God" is an evolution of small letter "god" which was the only form they knew and meant roughly "big spirit" or possibly "authority"(if I recall a human chief could be called a "godi" but would surely know he was not Odin). The point is that the fact that God or a god(from the gaming pov) has supernatural power matters less then the fact that He said he did and that He would look after you if you trust Him-in the long run. The supernatural power is irrelevant. If I said I had supernatural power it would not matter that I don't. It would matter that I am either lying or fictionalizing for entertainment purposes or simply daft because I pretty obviously don't have supernatural power other then possession of human reason, and don't particularly want it. If you have faith in me you will accept that I am telling the truth that I do not have any power you would term supernatural, that is I am not a secret warlock. But it is the declaration that is important not the supernatural. Jesus' disciples saw him directly, so they did in fact have as much reason to have faith in Him as you do to trust your love interest. I have to deal with a combination of a large number of less blatant things. However Faith is not believing against reason, it is believing against the vageries of emotional turmoil. If you have faith in your love interest because you know her for 18 years or faith in reason because you find it dependable you do well.

Part of the problem is the fault of the rather simplistic theology that comes from Sunday School that seems to imply there is supposed to be something magic about believing hard enough even though that is really more attempted psionics then faith. an interpretation that is really an extrapolation of a few Bible verses despite the evidence of history not to mention Bible verses to the contrary(surely all the citizens of Constantinople in 1453 cannot have been culpably lacking in faith in that sense). Job had faith, even though he is a poster boy for the point that having faith might still be unpleasant for the faithful.

All this sounds overly preachy and threatens to bring the thread off course. However I had to spend a lot of time defining faith because it was a complicated concept and someone has to define it if it is to be roleplayed. From Gurps terms it should be played like any virtue a cleric might have. Give the cleric Divine Favor, and make him pay for it in Disciplines of Faith. Which is probably something like what would be done with a cleric anyway. Then force him to roleplay faith in the course of his adventures. Or treat the god as a Patron and have trust be one of the demands he makes. Or something of the kind.