The Luckiness of Faith
The word “faith” is used here, not in the sense of conventional lip service to a religious creed, but to signify the state of mind of those who are either wholly at one with their religion, or who profoundly hold a philosophic belief from which flows an affirmation of life and a moral principle.
Sometimes men and women who have neither religion nor philosophy try to fill this void in their lives by pinning their faith on their children or their work. Love of one’s children and respect for one’s work can be strengthening influences. They cannot, however, take the psychological place of a profound identification between the self and some large religious or philosophic conviction of good, which provides a moral basis for behavior.
When we lack the steadying power of faith, the insecurity feelings latent in all of us tend to run away with our behavior. A psychologist recently made an informal study among his university students of three negative traits: bragging, snobbishness, and secretiveness, all of which express insecurity. When he correlated the results with what he knew of the students’ backgrounds and beliefs, there seemed to be an unmistakable link between the presence of these unlucky flaws and the absence of religious or philosophic faith.
We can cite very specific reasons why luck is most likely to be found in the faith-directed way of life. Faith tends to develop in the individual certain attributes that go far to ensure successful responses to chance. Courage is one of these attributes. But no less important are two traits that are in good part the psychological offspring of faith: integrity and sense of proportion.
It is through integrity that faith chiefly affects our responses to chance. Not that we find integrity in every person who professes a religion or a philosophy. But whenever we do find a person of genuine integrity, there, almost by definition, we find a core of faith. The exaltation of moral principle manifests a belief in universal law.
Together with courage and integrity, a third lucky characteristic flows from faith—the wide-horizoned attitude of mind that we think of as a sense of proportion. This attitude expresses itself in the personality through humility and through humor. The man who sees his actual position in the universe, and who can endure the revelation of his personal unimportance, gains enormous inner strength. Throughout life the sense of proportion links with chance to produce good luck and to mitigate misfortune.
The same quality, the sense of proportion derived from religion or philosophy, has a further bearing on our fortunes through its power in combatting envy, among the unluckiest of human characteristics. Competitive beings that we are, we all experience envy. But if envy is quickly controlled by a sense of proportion, it does little harm. In fact, a feeling of envy may be transformed to admiration and spur you to make more of your abilities. The great polar explorer Amundsen said that when he heard that Commodore Peary had reached the North Pole, his first thought was, “Then I shall visit both Poles.” And he did. The danger to luck arises when envy in unchecked and becomes a permanent state of mind, which engenders bitterness, scheming, and cynicism.
The envy-resisting sense of proportion, rooted integrity, and sustained courage—those are stars of luck’s constellation; and faith is their parent-quality. The need of effort to develop these attributes is too plain to need much discussion. What must be stressed is the point that any such effort, if it is to succeed, must follow the spiritual and intellectual route toward faith.