To have faith is to trust yourself to the water, as Alan Watts said. Having faith is not to trust that a lifeguard is always watching over you, in any body of water from a bathtub to a swimming pool to an ocean, but to trust that we can float, and even swim. Baptism wants us to be afraid that we will drown without God because our sinful souls are like a led ball that prevents us from swimming, and drags us down, down, down, to hell. Faith, however, can only come from believing we were born to swim.
For Christians, faith is always needing a God to watch over them like an all-watchful government agency, even though such a God almost never actually jumps in to save a drowning person, whether they are a child drowning in a backyard pool or a child being molested by a pedophile, even one that may happen to work for God himself!
As Watts goes on to explain, when you swim, you do not try desperately to grasp hold of the water, panicking as the water escapes your grasp, because doing so will cause you to sink and drown.This is exactly what the "believer" does by clinging to the hope that their God is watching them, and then hoping that their actions on his behalf, from burning witches and heretics to telling others they are headed for hell, will save them from being burned alive for all eternity by that same "loving" God.
Faith is not to need a savior, but to relax, and float, and by so doing, enjoy and relish in the gift of experiences that come with being alive in human form. Only by doing that can a person save themself.
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