Hope looks to the future. It is always future tense. Faith is now.

Hope is an action predicated on uncertainty. It is a word that describes the act of being unsure about one’s circumstances, and, essentially, wishing for an outcome conducive to one’s desires. It is based on the idea of faith; however, it is more or less an ideology rooted in the fear of the unknown. When one is unable to foresee his future, or the outcome of any particular situation, he is left with hope that the outcome suites his particular needs and desires.

Faith is based on the idea, that whatever the outcome is, it is for the better. It is an idea that is more spiritually based than hope, because it assumes that there is a force at work that will account for all actions that take place; no matter what the eventual outcome of a situation, faith requires its wearer to have full confidence that it is for the best in his or her life.


http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-hope-and-faith/#ixzz4S3il0zVv

Last edited by Goose (12/06/2016 7:09 am)

opendoug wrote:

TheLagerLad wrote:

Best answer I can think of is....

Hope: I hope my wife brings home Buffalo Wings for dinner tonight.

Faith: God knows I want Buffalo Wings for dinner and will, through divine intervention, provide her some sort of sign that she should bring home wings. 

LOL. That's basically how I've been looking at it up to this point. So if Lager prays every day and asks God to give his wife a sign that he wants Buffalo Wings for dinner, and then *one day* she does, it is a sign that God must exist and that he heard Lager's prayers, right? And if wings don't show up, either God doesn't exist or he's teaching Lager a lesson for something.

Goose wrote:

Faith is based on the idea, that whatever the outcome is, it is for the better. It is an idea that is more spiritually based than hope, because it assumes that there is a force at work that will account for all actions that take place; no matter what the eventual outcome of a situation, faith requires its wearer to have full confidence that it is for the best in his or her life.

Now that's a new take on faith, and that does provide some distinction between hope and faith that I hadn't considered before. It's like hope, except it adds the insinuation that everything is going to be okay because a higher power will make it so. I've heard other people say that faith is just believing in something you can't see and acting on that belief, which I have a hard time separating from regular ol' hope. So, using your definition, I can hope that an asteroid doesn't wipe out all life on Earth, but if I had faith I'd believe that whether an asteroid wipes out all life on Earth or not, it's all part of a higher plan.

It's kind of like saying that we can hope for whatever we think is best for us, but in the end whatever happens is best for us on the big-picture level?

Well then, how does one develop faith? I can see how it can and does get used to manipulate people...if I can convince Lager that if he prays using my name he'll get wings, and I can work it out behind the scenes so that wings keep showing up after he does what I tell him to do, I can probably get him to do whatever I want. He'll say he has faith, but I'll know that it's purely conditioning. How do you keep yourself from getting conned? Every organized religion seems to operate in such a way that you could never know...there's no way to see behind the metaphorical curtain. Without a miraculous vision of the divine workings in our lives, how do we know that our faith is placed in the proper entities and organizations?

I guess THAT is why at least in religious terms we call it "faith" ! 

Are we being conned ?  Great question. Perhaps after we die it will be known. In any case at least most of the prominent religions believe in the Do Unto Others ethic. It is a good ethic whether you have a God, faith, or even none. And maybe THAT is all that matters anyway.