The Concept of Belief
Since the beginning of mankind, belief has caused war after war and split after split. According to Wikipedia, belief is “the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.” To a high degree, belief is subject to the upbringing and surroundings of the believer. There is no ‘absolute belief’ existing in the world today. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines belief as “a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.” This removes any thought that belief is reserved to religion. While belief is a large part of religion, it is also a huge part of a non-religious person’s life. Belief is difficult to define and remains vague in most definitions because each person believes something different from the person next to them.
In his song Belief, John Mayer sings about how much belief can affect us and how dangerous it can be if we are not careful. ‘What puts a hundred thousand children in the sand/ Belief can, Belief can/ What puts the folded flag inside his mother's hand/ Belief can, Belief can.’ Our beliefs can have drastic impacts on the world and other people. According to one of the most common interpretations of this lyric, the sand stands for the Middle East and the folded flag inside his mother’s hand stands for all of the soldiers who have been killed in the War on Terror. Using this interpretation, Mayer is saying our belief that democracy is the best way and thinking we (U.S. citizens) have the answers can be dangerous. Our country moved into Afghanistan and Iraq with the belief that we were setting those

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people free. Instead, thousands and thousands of innocent people were killed, and the problems are still not solved.
At another point in the song Mayer implies that everyone has beliefs and no one wants to step down and lose them. He goes on to say, ‘We’re never gonna win the world/ We’re never gonna stop the war/ We’re never gonna beat this if belief is what we’re fighting for.’ Since everyone has their own beliefs specific to their surroundings, when we go into a war with the idea of giving someone else our beliefs it may not be possible to win.
Belief does not only relate to war and John Mayer songs. Religion is one of the most common forms of strong beliefs. Whether one has Muslim or Christian beliefs, or believes that no God exists at all, most people have a strong stance on religious beliefs. However, even within one religious group there can be many splits. In Christianity there are many splits in belief; Roman Catholic, Methodist, Mennonite, Brethren in Christ, the list goes on and on. History tells us that differences in religious beliefs can cause wars and persecution to the extreme. But belief is not only something radical and religious. It does not only cause war and pain.
Belief is a fundamental part of our everyday lives. We eat low fat foods because we believe that it will help our health. We sit down on a chair because we believe that it will support our weight. We pray because we believe God listens and will answer. We cheer for the Phillies because we believe this could be the year. But in each of these situations, someone else could have the opposite belief. For example, fans of the Devil Rays believe it is their year to win the World Series (although they are wrong), and atheists do not pray because they believe there is no God and therefore He will not answer. But what causes us to believe what we believe?
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Our parents and upbringing have a large hand in what we believe. Role models that we had as kids can shape our lives as we try to be more like those people. Young minds are the most impressionable, so when we see our role model saying something we believe it must be right. The society in which we grow up also greatly affects our belief. Growing up in a twenty-first century U.S. leads us to believe that even the moon is not really that far away. It takes only slightly over half a day to travel to the other side of the world. But at the same time in a primitive, remote village in Nepal the other side of the world seems a lifetime’s journey away. The type of entertainment that surrounds us influences our beliefs more than we may even realize. So many factors go into determining our beliefs that it is not possible to expect two people to have identical beliefs.
Belief is an awesome and terrible thing. It is a characteristic that can distinguish one human from the next. It shapes our lives, our relationships, and our world. But it can cause tremendous damage when we try to force our beliefs onto another person. Our beliefs are the core of who we are, and while that is important to recognize, it is also essential that we remember that another person’s beliefs are the core of who they are as well. Max Born said, “The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world.” But we need belief in our lives. As Israeli heroin Hannah Szenes said, “One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.”