Faith keeps you going

It is the decision to believe in something

Let me talk to you about faith.

It is the thing that keeps you going when the evidence says stop. The thread you hold when the ground gives way. The yes you whisper to a future you cannot see. Faith is not the opposite of doubt. It is the courage to move forward in the presence of doubt. And it has been used, misused, weaponized, and reclaimed across every century of human history.

Strip it down. What is faith, really?

At its simplest, faith is trust without proof. It is the decision to believe in something — a God, a future, a person, a purpose — even when that belief cannot be verified. The scientist has faith that the sun will rise, based on a million past sunrises. The lover has faith that the beloved will return, based on a promise. The believer has faith in the divine, based on an experience, a text, a tradition, a whisper in the dark. Faith is not ignorance. It is a leap — made with open eyes, not closed ones.

But faith has a shadow. And the shadow has been long.

The Weaponization of Faith

The coloniser understood faith as a weapon. He did not merely bring a new God to Africa. He brought a new architecture of belief — one that required the African to abandon their own spiritual inheritance and adopt the coloniser’s. The old gods were demons. The ancestors were damned. The rituals were witchcraft. The only path to salvation ran through the coloniser’s church, the coloniser’s book, the coloniser’s image of the divine. Faith, in the coloniser’s hands, became a technology of submission. The African was taught to have faith in the very system that was destroying them.

This weaponization continues. The preacher who demands faith while enriching himself. The politician who invokes faith to justify corruption. The system that tells the poor to have faith — in the market, in the government, in the next election — while the structures of extraction remain untouched. Faith, in these hands, is not liberation. It is a leash.

The Faith of the Ancestors

The old ones understood faith differently. They did not separate faith from life. Faith was not a set of propositions to be believed. It was a practice to be lived. The libation poured at dawn was an act of faith — trust that the ancestors were present, that the circle was unbroken, that the living and the dead were still in communion. The farmer planting a seed was an act of faith — trust that the rain would come, that the harvest would follow, that the soil would not fail. The naming ceremony was an act of faith — trust that the child would carry the lineage forward, that the name would mean something beyond the grave.

This faith was not blind. It was tested. The rain did fail sometimes. The harvest did fail sometimes. The ancestors did not always answer. And yet the people kept pouring libation, kept planting, kept naming. Not because they had proof, but because they had commitment. Faith, for the ancestors, was not the absence of doubt. It was the decision to continue in the face of doubt. That is the faith that survives.

The Sovereign Faith

The sovereign mind reclaims faith as an act of agency. It does not hand its faith to a preacher, a politician, or a system. It examines what it believes. It asks: Who taught me this? What does it serve? Does it liberate me or bind me? It keeps the faith that nourishes and releases the faith that poisons. It is not afraid to change its mind. It is not afraid to say “I was wrong.” It is not afraid to say “I don’t know.”

The sovereign faith is not a fortress. It is a river. It moves. It adapts. It deepens. It can hold doubt without drowning. It can question without collapsing. It can say: I believe, and I am still learning what I believe. That is not weakness. That is the highest form of spiritual maturity.

So I ask you today: What do you have faith in? Not what you were taught to believe. What you actually trust when the noise is off and the crowd is gone. What carries you through the dark? What makes you rise in the morning when there is no reason to rise?

And the second question: What faith was imposed on you that you have never examined? A doctrine. A tradition. A fear. A promise of reward or punishment. Where did it come from? Whose interests does it serve? And what would happen if you examined it — honestly, openly, without fear?

Faith is not the enemy of reason. It is the companion of courage. The coloniser weaponized it. The ancestors practiced it. The sovereign reclaims it — not as a blind leap, but as an open-eyed trust in something larger than the self. The thread may be thin. But it is yours. And it is enough to hold.

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I. Ras Gad Shangox owned and operated a Taxi in Toronto for 28 years before 2016 when he sold his plate and became licensed as a delivery truck driver. His series “Pocket Wisdom for Sovereign Minds” was born of his curiousity about the relationship between individual words and their impact on human consciousness and behaviour.