Fear in faith

I believe yesterday I was banging on about fear in hope, and how it doesn't really do any good for the individual concerned. And as I now believe hope to be a faith in itself I thought I'd take a look at fear in religion....

Religion generally comes with a set of rules if you like, to follow. A good religious person follows all the rules. So if you do not follow every single rule all of the time, does this make you a bad religious person? I'm not religious, and therefore I wouldn't know. I would imagine though that the majority of religious people would believe the person that follws all the rules to be rather good.

Can you be a good Christian? Or a good Catholic? A good Muslim? A good Jew? Maybe it is possible, but I can't for the life of me think why anyone would let a set of rules made many moons ago govern the way they lead their life. My only thought is that of fear.

Faith it seems generally has this set of rules, and there are consequences if you don't follow them as you should. Perhaps you will upset your god, perhaps you will go to hell? Is that eternal damnation? I don't know, but a religious person is made to believe that this is what will happen if they break the rules. Of course, you may correct me if I am wrong, for I am not religious, and haven't really got any sources to back me up, it's all just guess work.

But who really knows what's around the corner? I'm more of a believer of seizing an opportunity. This is also a sort of faith, but then that "what if" fear comes in, and wola, you miss it.

Family is also a faith. If you do something against your families wishes you get punished for it. Therefore many people follow the rules, do as they are told, for fear that they may get into some serious trouble. They don't make friends with people they might actually like because their parents don't like them. Now in my opinion it is up to you who you choose to be friends with and what you do with your life. And fear is the one thing that holds everyone, and I mean everyone back.

You might believe in your best friend, but at some point fear of something will enter the relationship, and from that moment, it's never the same as it were before.

Think of the consequences of some of the things you've done....or even haven't done. I don't believe in living with regrets, but there are things I should have done, as I expect there are things that you should have done, but fear has held you back.

I suppose that if you live with the "everything happens for a reason" attitude, a faith in itself, then you would say that because you didn't do something due to a fear of yours, it wasn't supposed to happen. And yes, you would probably end up at the same point in the end, but would the journey to that same point been as it has? It could have been worse you say? What's that? Fear? Now perhaps you fear that the path you chose was wrong. But the path you chose was a faith. It was the safest option, but if an opportunity was set out in front of you, even if it went against you faiths (religion, family, friends) you missed out on something that yes, could have gone badly wrong, but you missed out on this why? So you didn't go to hell, and you didn't piss everyone off?

I'm kind of running around in circles here. I'm basically trying to say that fear in itself is, yes, you've guessed it, a faith. However, fear is probably the most picked up and put down faith. You only believe in fear when it suits you...or your friends, family and religion.