Faith and religion are different things to different people. I’ve come to the conclusion that dictionary definitions are pretty useless to define faith, god, religion. The dictionary definition is only, at best, a snapshot of different ways people use a word at a particular point in time. And at worst, it shows the biases of the editing committee, or whoever writes those definitions. Therefore the dictionary is a useful guide, but not an authority.

And words like faith and religion, which are highly emotionally charged, have many different (possibly even contradictory) meanings to different people. Continue reading →