Sacrifices of Faith

This is hardly a guide, and too short and inconclusive to be a resource. It is best if you see this as a small awareness-raiser and something to think about, and perhaps discuss.

Some roles in this world are built around Faith: priests of the Light, priests of the Shadow, paladins and to a lesser extent druids and shamans. In this post I limit myself to priests of the Light and paladins. Although shadowpriests are touched by extension.

First of all, what exactly is that thing called 'Faith' and does it influence my character, and if so, does it show? Well, there is no one answer as the idea of what faith is has changed overtime. But, very few of you are interested in history so lets just see if we can discover what Faith means in WoW. Modern 20th century idea of faith is subscription to certain ideas, like reciting that you believe in the resurrection of the body, virgin birth etc etc etc. That idea is very novel, but lets see if it can work in WoW. First of all both Light and Shadow (religions) are very silent on cosmology and history, there is no indication that they have some sacred view of how world came to be and how history has led up to this moment. Secondly, in a magical world you don't need to believe in miracles - they are real. At last, in WoW faith provides power. If all it took to get the ability to raise the dead from the grave, heal wounds and smite foes was to recite "I believe that the world is banana-shaped" until you actually believe it, any self-respecting powermonger would've done so.

There are three other views of what faith is. One of them that it is loyalty to a divine agent. You can compare it to swearing loyalty to some king or lord and treating with the divine in like fashion, although acknowledging that no king can be as wise, powerful and magnificent. Clearly, that is not really what paladins and priests do. Two remaining options are more likely: faith is a religious practice, and faith is living according to a moral code. And yes indeed, WoW-lore books confirm it to be so. Light is described as more a philosophy than religion (moral code), and it is stated that priests undertake various trials of faith (religious practice).

Sacrifices of Morality

Faith is adherence to a moral code; in case of the Light it means following the three virtues, and derived ideas such as justice and so forth. Strict moral code like this is contrary to every-day experiences. It is considered normal to just shout back at whoever is insulting you, or to avoid any dealings with people you find unpleasant. Most people are narrowminded towards needs of others, and see their own problems and concerns as far more important. Vast majority only help strangers as long as it is no real bother. As you see, following Light's moral code would be a great break with every-day experiences. You have to grab yourself by the hair and drag yourself along this path, it won't ever come naturally. Of course it is unreasonable to expect every priest or paladin to be a paragon of all these values: most probably struggle, trying to juggle their impulses deriving from every-day experiences with divine morals. This is the great sacrifice one has to make in order to attain powers granted by the Light - force oneself to live according to restricting rules that contradict human measure.

Every devout person probably wants to be faithful. He will suffer if he believes he fails to meet up with divinely-high expectations, he will struggle to remain true to the path. For instance a paladin who discovers that he only helps others as long as it is no real bother to himself and fails to make true sacrifices for the sake of compassion might force himself to abandon his wealth and possessions and give them all to charity, just to cross the threshold and attain spiritual progress. A priest who has trouble aiding those he dislikes can go to prison and spend weeks if not months attending to scum of the worst criminals, again to cross a difficult stage and attain spiritual progress.

The path to a moral ideal is a harsh struggle against yourself and all every-day experiences. It is arduous, hard, full of pitfalls and challenges that need overcoming. If you want to portray this process realistically, you can consider having doubts that it is possible, falling in deep depressions because you've hit a threshold, putting yourself through trying experiences in an attempt to progress. Most importantly, always do a check on yourself, is your character following the moral code, does he want to follow it, what stands in his way?

Awareness Raiser: At least part of Power derives from sticking to this harsh code of conduct, and sticking to it is a road of epic challenges and depleting sacrifices. A paladin or a priest who is hardly concerned with ethics of faith will never be as powerful as one who does. So check your character's power, and ask if it is in measure with his sacrifice!

Sacrifices of Religion

Another way of Faith is ritual. To an outside the ritual can appear a silly practice: mumbling before an altar, kneeling on cold floor. The essence behind the ritual is to seek an alternate experience, and through it union with the divine. There is a deeper layer to prayer, it is not simply about kneeling and mumbling. Although, as in any religion, your guess as to the nature of that deeper layer is as good as mine, lets for the sake of argument use the following example; you pray with a group to experience a unity, a unity in humility before the divine. Others yet seek such experiences in combat, where they try to cast out all pleasure of bloodshed and make their combat pure, for the sake of duty alone.

Anything can become a ritual; and there will be a great difference between a ritual performed by a devout believer (priest or paladin) and some peasant who pays only lip service. This is another area where you can show your character's belief. A scarlet crusader would be very different in battle to a dwarven soldier. For his battle is a touching religious experience, and may be even sacred in some way. Such experiences become very important to the believer overtime, and missing a scheduled prayer would be an unmissable burden.

Some religions, Light among them, demand action. To a brother of the cathedral that action can be charity, to a crusader it is battle against the undead. Just as a devout will seek those alternate experiences, he will try to do what he believes is his duty. Just as with ethics, most actions are contrary to common sense. It is more natural to run from an undead monster than to fight it, to buy a cake than to give coin to a beggar, to spend evening drinking with friends rather than lecturing the ignorant. Again, in this counter-intuitive duty lies another struggle of faith. You can add much depth to your character by struggling with your duty. Looking for excuse to avoid it, or not heaving the heart to perform it, not being ready to make the needed sacrifices. In the end, your character may lose faith or take an extreme step to overcome such a challenge. A paladin may throw himself in combat against a powerful Death Knight, a priest can lock himself up for months and sustain himself with prayer and water. Options are many.

Awareness raiser: Faith is ritual practice. Even most mundane thing can become a sacred ritual, but the one to perform it would do so in a very different way from anybody else. Faith is also action, that goes contrary to every-day logic. Ritual and action can both cause great anxiety and result in drastic steps if your character has trouble progressing. Again, power is tied to practice of religion. If your character shirks from duty and neglects practice, you should think about his IC power.

Conclusion: Faith is more than just believing that the world is flat or that demons are evil. There are great expectations, great sacrifices and terrible anxieties and fears involved. If Faith doesn't change and affect your character, you are probably not exploring it to its full potential. Please, think of what your character has sacrificed so far, and balance your Holy/Shadow power accordingly.

Many good things in this post.

/approve!

If I remember what I read right, religion is about finding answers with someone/something else and philosophy is about finding answers by yourself. A bit dogma (it is so!) vs plausibility (hmm, that could be possible yes), philosophy is all about asking questions and figuring things out and isn't that a bit of a contrast in having faith in something? It's actualy something that is being considered, that next to the different "religious" groups in wow, that a philosophical "school of thought" might fit some characters better.

If I'm "auto running into the nether" you can ignore this

Well, philosofy has several meanings. I've used it as "life-style" or "life-logic".

Philosophy and religion both tries to answer the fundamental questions of existence (why do we exist? what is our purpose in life? why should we care about acting ethically?). Philosophy distinguishes itself from religion by basing itself on rational arguments, which would work even in the absence of a higher will responsible for the creation of the subject of the question.

Since the Titans neatly fulfills the role of creators and the higher will behind mortal races in WoW (even though the current state of mortal affairs is not as they intended, due to them being imperfect), questions of philosophy become shifted into the context of them; Why are the titans imperfect? Why do they exist? Is it right for us to exist contrary to their will (the Algalon fight touches upon this)? If our true purpose is not to be as they will, what is it then?

Not terribly faith- or religion-related, but I thought it interesting to ponder.

A good write, and a good read. It almost freaks me out tho. I began delving into priest RP more deeply with my own char and devised a whole training program which touches many of the points and topics you raised. I kept it silent and even now I'm still working on it as I consider it in design stage. About two weeks later Kaeden comes around with something similar for paladins. Now you come around with this and describe a large aspect of my roleplay quite literally. Great minds think alike?
Allow me give some examples and share my experiences with them.

Sacrifices of Morality

You have an interesting stance on the character progression and some of the practices you mention I have RP'd myself. There is a challenge in this. For example, locking yourself up alone with just water is good character development but poor RP. IMO it serves more as a context when you go away for a week or so. If you like to RP actively, a better approach to the same concept (and you mention this as well) is getting locked up in prison. I've done that myself a month or two ago and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. It was a blast. The criminals, the guards, the room.. it's a great change of scenery and setting for a character.

Another thing I try to do with my char is 'see beyond the border'. Make it your character's mission to do something for an allied nation or something. This gives a great change of scenery and RP, expands the character's horizon and serves as a mark of his altruistic nature (or something like it).

If you have an imminent war, go ahead of the army and start fighting. It's a great way to integrate your personal RP into a larger world.

Another thing I enjoy doing a lot on my pietous priest is getting into someone else's storyline and try to help them. It has given me a very diversive experienced but unfortunately it also taught me there are more storylines than I have time to keep up. Some people manage to come up with really good things and it's a great way to challenge your own character to use his religious approach to the situation.


Sacrifices of Religion

A very paramount aspect of my character. It isn't rare to find me inviting people for a ritual of reflection. I doubt people have ever seen me in a battle without seeing me recite endless prayers of courage and strength. Preaching and praying are integral part of my character's doings. It's even fun to do!

You are absolutely right about a religious angle on battle for paladins, for example. I tried to tackle exactly that with my column "Warriors of the Light" in the roaring lion. I can tell you there are more of such texts on the way and in time they will be gathered in a book

I try to do similar religious angles on simple things in 'average daily things' but this is mostly the subject of my preaches.

But rituals and symbols add great flavor to a character and come as warmly recommended to any religious RP'er. I envy paladins for having such a wonderfully decorated armor set with little papers and glyphs attached to them. I would have named them each and written a story around each and every one of them. I reluctantly settle for GHI equivalents

In terms of rituals, prayers are a great start but it can go hand in hand with the sacrifices you mentioned above. A ritual of pain, penance, reflection, soul searching, spiritualism... they can all be part of your characters daily doings. And when your character is done, it can aid and assist other people in theirs.

But.. BUT... it doesn't have to be as dramatic all the time. Do you have to walk from point A to B? Don't mount up and run! Walk and sing, if you have the time. You have to wait for someone to finish a meeting? Sit down and pray or sing. I know that in todays modern society it's commonplace to just fire up your iPod, but before there were walkmans people used to sing or play an instrument. A harmonica, a flute or songs really add flavour to the character, help to kill some time and add to a great RP feeling for bypassers. If it's something I've grown deeply fond of on my character, it's singing songs of the Light or derived morals whenever he has an idle moment or walk. This isn't even restricted to religious characters (a bartender could be singing a drinking song for example).

A note on power
You mention often power as a result (and in proportion) of the sacrifices your character makes. This is interesting, but I would consider it mostly interesting in a restrictive way. What I mean by that is... A paladin gets himself injured but "lacks the strength in his faith to recover himself". What I wouldn't use is this: a Paladin fights a cultists and attacks with "the power built up by saying over 9000 prayers, 20 self administered lashes and 10 hail mary's". It simply doesn't make sense. As such I'd like the power of the Light to express itself mostly in emotional and mental strength or will. And this can be both trivial and complex. As trivial example for my character this could mean he'll dare talk to the hunchback of notre dame where he would have cowered at the sight of him without his religion.
A complex example may make him resilient to mind manipulation from cultists.

It doesn't necessarily have to manifest itself physically. I mean, a person that finds new emotional strength to live after having lost his family is itself also a tremendous power that can be played out. The ability to surpass basic human emotions and human reactions are also a manifestation of faith (and a power to be reckoned with!).


Anyways, seeing the interest in this religious RP has rekindled my interest to finish my own work on this. I'll keep you posted when I have something to show for

It was very interesting to read indeed and arrise some more questions.
I'll participate to the talk, and share my humble opinion. In no way - even if my point of view could differ - I'm contesting what's written by Exaythe, cause I believe it fit very well the Lore. What I'm saying is maybe not so much fitting with the Lore.

Concerning the difference between philosophy and Religion, it's amuzing cause I discussed about that with my brother yesterday. We aggreed that Philosophy is mind related. It's a logical annalyse of human behaviour and how the world is working build by using the work of previous philosoph and your own advice. Philosophy is argumentation, thesis and so... It all happen in the mind.
While religion and spirituality concern more the soul or the feelings. The tools used to understand how the world is working are faith, rituals and such things. It's not needed to think. It's even suggested to not think, as the mental, which is also an expression of ego cut the communion with the Universe/God.


Concerning Faith, I think that Faith is related to Love (universal Love, not romantic love obviously) and trust. Faith is to believe and trust something without the need of prove. It's not easy to have faith, specialy in our septical, scientist society.
Therefor, I don't think Faith could drive at any moment to fear and anxiety. Because Fear and anxiety is the prove of a lack or love or trust.
However, while putting yourself in hardship, to test your faith, whe you feel depression, anxiety and fear, it's the moment you fail. When you suceed to go over your fear, anxiety and depression, is the moment you succeed.



Concerning what's happening in game, I notice that the Lore make the WOW spirituality for human very "christian like'. I find it a bit manichean, and negative (with punishement, redemption, vindication). The wisdom shared seem to me a bit naive and limited. For example, I can't agree that fighting against an ennemy (not speaking about undead or demon here) is anything close to be "good".
This is why I find the spirituality in the Lore very interesting.

Human have a kind of limited, archaic, and manicheen spirituality which fit well their race.
While Draenei willbe a lot more wise, tolerant, open, peaceful...in a veritable union with the Light.

A very interesting read Exaythe, thank you. It is definantely things to consider and I think it's very good suggestions how to approach faith IC.

I just wish to add that a lot of rituals in religion are therapeutical in their nature and purpose. Deep prayer for instance, is essentially the same as meditation. It's about shedding the world around you and finding peace within. Meditation does this through emptying of the mind and just let the world pass... shedding oneself of worries, concerns and stress. In deep prayer, you don't pray for 5 minutes and then you're done... you keep it up until you start feeling at ease with yourself. Until you find inner peace. Allowing all stress, concerns and worries to simply slid off you. Both are essentially stress relievers.
Similarily, confessions are about sharing what gnaws at you and haunts you. Speaking up about what has been building up inside you and letting of steam. It's essentially the same as psychological therapy. It allows you to rid yourself of things that troubles you, by sharing it with someone who listens.
Penance is a third version of this... making you punish yourself, not because of some silly rules in a book. But because people feel better if they have to make up for something bad they've done. Allowing themselves to feel that justice has been done and the debt they had due to the faults they did have been repaid.

That's also why priests and monks are often presented as guides, "fathers", teachers and so on. They are there to help people come to terms with themselves, easen their burdens, help them deal with guilt, share their pain, worries and concerns and then help them find a way to deal with it all. There to assist and guide. Help people come to terms with whom they are through mentally and emotionally restorative rituals.

I use this approach on Gahalla a lot, she is deeply spiritual and she prays a lot. Going into a meditative trance as she reads the prayers and allows all the stress in the world to simply leave her. Not seldom she also does penance and similar, not because she wants to find enlightenment (allthough she'd probably say that... and believes it) but because she deals with her guilt issues and anxiety that way.

Also, as an aside on the nature of philosophy and religion discussion: Religion is philosophy. It is the creed and the values that are the heart and soul of any religion, which is basically just a big philosophy on the nature of the world and how every person is supposed to live.
This is why Taoism, Confusianism and Buddhism all are religions, despite that two don't mention souls or gods and one just denies the latter's relevance. It is also why certain big philosophies like existentialism and humanism seem so much like religions (also, look at Plato's cave metaphor. It is very similar to religion in it's composition).
Gods, prophets, books are all trappings. It is what religions teach about life that is the important bit.

look at Plato's cave metaphor. It is very similar to religion in it's composition

Ah, the analogy of the Cave...How I strive to remove my bonds, turn to face the light of the fire and crawl towards the Form of the Good.

<3 Plato.

You mean the one with the guys in the cave, not seeing the outside and when one of them see it, the others don't believe him?

Thanks for replies!

@Elloa

I think that inner strife, fear and anxiety are part of religious experience at one point or another. Even if it may sound counter-intuitive and certainly counter-productive. Certain individuals felt that their souls are lost and no ordinary means can achieve redemption, and they set out to do most unhinged things like sitting on pillars or administering lashes as they walked. Mystics struggled as they meditated for months and years and failed to glimpse the divine. I recall hearing of a buddhist seminar which dealt specifically with that: people feeling that they are stuck and are coming no closer to enlightement despite what they do. Indeed, every-day religion of an average person would most likely lead to relaxation and peace, but 'serious' practicioners are likely to go through a lot.

@Jeanpierre.
Great minds think alike indeed. Since I too am working on holy lessons (not priestly though)

And about philosofy and religion. Personally I see it as art and science. Hamlet and Introduction to something-something Psychology both explore the same topic, but do so differently. Philosofy tries to explain things, religion tries to reveal them.

PS: Jean, do you think it would be fun to get together and make a list of what every priest&paladin can do to enchance his own faith-RP? A compilation of ideas so to speak.