Willingness and faith is personal and experiential MHO.
I like this quote:
“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
One has experiences of challenge to face inquisitors. Atheists / agnostics/ Evangelical fundamentalists/ nationalists / fascists demand "proof" of validity on their terms. One is always judged a liar or worse in some people's forums. Trigger words like "faith" /"belief"/"God" are like tripwires setting off explosions of anger/ longing / loneliness inviting arguments ad infinitum.
Is one lying to oneself? No! One has to face some of the
people who have not lost their illusion of control/ self sufficiency & /or they could only believe in a god who will be like themselves. One is not delivering up a choice that pleases a consumer of propaganda. There are some who have never known anything else.
Here are quotes I like by Hannah Arendt:
"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true... The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."/
" The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end---is being destroyed."
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