Faith, belief and religion can be used interchangeably, though belief and religion vary a little one from the other but faith encompasses them both. To understand faith fully we have to look at it in the light of the other words, i.e. ‘religion’ and ‘belief.’
Belief means firm opinion or acceptance. Religion exceeds the opinion or acceptance to involve the practices based on the opinion or acceptance. Though at-times people do observe practices without having any belief in what they practice. So religious practice does not necessarily indicate belief. Therefore belief and religion do vary since one can exist without the other.
Faith by the dictionary definition means a strong belief or complete trust in someone or something. Some dictionary adds “without a proof or evidence” to their definition of faith. But this will only be true if we still consider facts as proof or evidence of the unseen. Faith, though it may not have a facts as proof or evidence, it is nevertheless an evidence in itself.
Faith also means religion, this is why we can say the Christian faith to mean the Christian religion, and the Buddhist Faith to mean the Buddhist religion. When I refer to faith I am not referring to any useless faith. James 2:20 says “Faith without works is dead.” So it’s quite completely correct to say faith encompass religion and belief. At least meaningful faith does.
Excerpted from the book “FAITH:The Evidence of Things Not Seen“
