I think we need to change the English word faith to be a verb. This way, it cannot be confused with the verb believe because the word will inherently require being put into the action phrasing of a sentence. Let me provide an example.
“I have faith that the marketing team will come through and bring us enough leads.”
This sentence can be easily replaced with the following sentence:
“I believe that the marketing team will come through and bring us enough leads.”
There really is no difference in implied meaning here, except that the word believe is a verb. However, what is really strange here is that when you believe, it does not require you to take any action at all. You just simply believe that it will occur. I suppose we have centuries of religious debate about faith versus works to blame for this issue. We took this really awesome word and stripped it of all its glory and left it a powerless noun.
Analyze my example sentence for a while. If I believe the marketing team will come through, then there is the implication that I trust that they will do their job and come through for me. Meanwhile, I will go on my merry way and hope that when the time of reckoning happens, I have the required leads. However, if I have faith in the marketing team – should that not imply something different?
If I have faith in that team, then I am going to do things to help them. For example, pay them money! Or give them great content! Or perhaps do something really crazy, like actually showing up for the leads that they schedule appointments with! This is action. This is a definite demonstration of real effort towards what you have faith will happen if you support them. Clearly, when people have faith, they are zealots. They are not content with simple belief, but rather emphatically behind the effort. You can certainly tell the difference between an executive who has faith in marketing and one who just simply says they believe marketing is a good idea. When you see a religious person exercising faith, you know what they are about as opposed to the person casually saying they are a believer while they do the exact opposite of their professed belief.
So faith is action. Faith should be a verb. When you have faith, you have something far superior to belief. I have heard people say often that faith is blindly believing in something that you have no evidence for. I think that is a completely false notion. Faith is hoping for something strong enough so that you will put effort into it and by so doing will see the fruits of your labor. That is what we mean by exercising faith.
If I believe marketing will come through, then I will put my faith in them, which means that I will fund them. That will support them. That I will show up for meetings. I will enthusiastically share their results and champion their cause. This is because I have faith. I just do not believe marketing is a good idea, so I ignore them and slash the budget. In essence, the difference between the two is that the faithful support their faith with their time and money. The believers just hang out because they like the music.
So therefore, “I faith marketing!”
