A Faithful Writer’s Manifesto
Photo by Alejandro Escamilla on Unsplash
16 April 2020
Why do I write? Let me start with perhaps an easier question: what is faith?
One major narrative that underlies each of our own individual stories is our journey to faith. I’m sure that this journey is almost overwhelmingly in a forward direction, despite what it may sometimes look like.
Are more people on a journey from being Faithful to Faithless, or they actually doing the opposite? On one hand, we have a general and well documented shift away from association with organised religion, which might suggest a mass shift away from faith is also occurring. On the other, if we broaden our understanding of 'Faithful' to include a more holistic understanding of what it is to have 'faith', it might suggest the opposite .
Before I lose you and this discussion collapses in on itself, let me try and define faith for these purposes: not just simply faith expressed as religious belief, or belief even in God, but in a profound sense of order, coherency and meaning that operates within our lives. But to go one step further, I would suggest this position is not simply the rejection of nihilism, which I think can be achieved through a largely intellectual exercise. It is to arrive at this point through such an overwhelmingly ridiculous and improbable set of events — where the universe is seemingly extending its hand to you in a direct and personal manner; where coincidence is engulfed by the higher power of synchronicity —that you simply have no choice but to have faith.
Once I found this faith, and I decided to be a writer, I was really left with no choice: I have to write about my faith. The reason is partly redundant — that is, you just have to — but also ultimately with the hope that it leads to increased faith in others. How to do so is tricky, because under the aforementioned definition, faith cannot be argued for; it is only once the hidden hand (that sounds creepier than it should) becomes manifest in someone’s life, and they choose to accept the confirmations that it offers, can faith be reached.
None of us, clearly, can claim to be operating as this hand. But, perhaps, we can aspire to be someone's confirmation: to be a vessel for the worldly experience that is exactly what is needed in a seekers life at a particular point in time. Hidden underneath all the wild conspiracies, biblical catastrophes, false gods and alien races that I will inevitably end up rambling about here, that is the ultimate point of my writing.
I approach this both as an intellectual and spiritual challenge.
Intellectually: to apply my skills as a writer effectively, to engage the reader sufficiently while removing, or at least reducing, the barriers that might disengage them. To be ever mindful of the genre conventions relating to tiresome issues such as article length, word choice and the (ever-divisive) appropriate use of semi-colons. Also, wombat videos.
Spiritually: to hold fast to a moral framework, which I practice by consciously adhering to a particular set of virtues. I think overwhelmingly of humility, lest the slightest traces of condescension, grandstanding or prejudice creep in. I think also of honesty, to ensure that my motives are transparent and the emotions I convey are authentic. Perhaps, if I may be so self-indulgent, even traces of courage and sacrifice: to be brave enough to offer up a piece of my soul with my writing as a gesture of how much it means without fear of how it may be received.
And that leads to perhaps the most important virtue, and the hardest: detachment. That it is not up to me to convince people to be Faithful. That if I write with these virtues in mind, it will be enough for the people it is written for. That, if this is the path I am meant to be on, God — or whoever the source of this faith is — will take care of the rest.