Faith and Becoming

I'm still focusing on the H. Richard Niebuhr essay I've discussed in previous posts.

It seems to me faith is more appropriately defined as allowing yourself to become something. I don't think the idea of faith as reliance and dependence is particularly helpful. We don't rely and depend on gods/models for our being as much as we allow them to create us in their image and to give us whatever being they have. If we make the titanic social-darwinian gods of market capitalism our models we will be created in their image. We will assume their values and their understanding of the nature of reality. We will become a reflection of those gods. Same thing happens when we select one of the permutations of the American Dream to become our model or guiding principal. We begin to look, act and think like our gods and models. Don Quixote and Madame Bovary are excellent examples of this.