Belief - Faith

   Sorry this one took so long, I was having a hard time really explaining what I wanted to say without making this ridiculously long. 

   Last time I stated that Faith is not an end all reason.  Faith cannot be the “why” of any question.  It is merely a layover on a flight to a reason.

Well, let’s see if I cannot quantify this belief of mine.  To begin let’s start with what faith is.  When I asked myself this question I came back with three answers.  The first is the dictionary answer, which (as I previously stated) is “something that is believed especially with strong conviction” (Merriam-Webster).  The second is the Biblical answer which is found in Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Both of these definition are fine, but they are both lacking to my mind and it’s hard to really explain why.  If I was pressed for a reason, I would have to say that both those definitions seem like “how” answers.  They explain how faith is played out but don’t do well with the what faith is.  This is especially true for the verse in Hebrews as the context it is in is the “Hall of Faith” chapter that describes how Old Testament figures of yester-year acted out their faith.

After thinking about it for a long time, I would use this definition to define the “what” of faith.  “Faith is the acceptance of unknown variables as facts based upon proven assurances; proven at least so far as the individual possessing the faith is concerned.” Faith is to life what postulates are to Mathematics.

For those who aren’t familiar with postulates, here’s what they basically are.  Postulates are things that cannot be proven true for every situation (proven with a nice, neat, mathematical equation that is), but are accepted as true anyways.  This acceptance is based on the fact that it’s we can demonstrate it works for a given equation.  Because it’s true for a finite set of equations we go ahead and assume it’s true for any given equation.

Let’s see if I can’t reword that for those who don’t like math.  With a postulate we can prove it’s true on a small thing, so we accept it as truth for the large thing.  This is the essence of what I believe faith to be.  Faith is not blind.  Someone who blindly accepts a teaching as being true is in violation of scriptures (1 John 4:1-4 tells us to test even angels to make certain they are from God, Acts 17:11 demonstrates that the appropriate response to a new teaching is to examine the scriptures to see if these things are true or not).

I guess I’m gonna put a stop to my explanation there.  I cannot more fully quantify what belief is without talking in circles at this point.  So instead, I’ll wrap it up by giving a quick bullet point list of what I’m really trying to drive home about faith.

• Faith is not blind.  There may be times when we have to go out on the limb, but we do so because we have firm knowledge that the tree is alive and sturdy.
• Faith is an extension of a deeper foundation with God.  The greater the foundation, the greater our faith.
• The above is true because as we understand more about God, the more we trust in Him, the greater our faith will be.

And that my friends, is what I believe about faith.  Next time I’ll take a bit of a closer look into what I believe about the Bible (I’ve already stated WHY it’s the basis of my belief, but now I’d like to take the opportunity to further look into what I believe about the Bible itself.)

Belief - Faith