Thursday 20 August 2015

Faith Bubble - An Unhealthy Substitute for Foundational Faith

Faith is a wondrous thing.  Some people are gifted with it and have a propensity to move mountains. Others are not, and struggle to move the covers off themselves so they can get out of bed.  My mother is a creature of pure faith.  She doesn’t know much about science and isn’t particularly well read historically.  Yet when the antagonists of God berate her, their faulty conjectures strike her as hollow plenitudes: They have no more substance than the breath that carries them.  She isn’t trained in a particular academic field and as such, capable of correcting their folly by referencing publications and learned men.  No, that is not within her scope.  But what she does have is an innate God given PhD In faith; Such that, their attempts to rattle her are futile.  And her exemplified relationship with God rattles them.

We can’t all have my mother’s faith (or a gifting of faith).  And neither do we need it.  Paul instructs us that that which we believe is rational, and he is correct.  What he means is, we can see and affirm many things about God and Christianity without faith - and that this in turn, builds our personal faith. God is evident in His creation, and this insight is unmistakable to many by simple observation, and to others by study.  This does not negate faith.  There are areas where faith is required.  This is God’s intent and prerogative.  Many wonder why He wouldn’t simply reveal Himself to the degree that we could not deny Him.  How could you not believe in Him if He shook the earth from a pillar of flame and commanded us to listen?  Or, wouldn’t it be easier to evangelize the world if Noah’s ark was perched in plain site, and all we had to do was point at it?