Faith

Last night, I watched a movie. In this movie, one of the characters was a Catholic priest (who actually mentioned God a total of zero times), and at one point he was talking about faith. He defined faith as a belief in a thing larger than yourself. I have also heard it defined as a belief in an unseen thing. This means that faith is a specific kind of belief--I believe in the sun, but I don't have faith in it because I can see it.

However, that isn't what faith is. Hebrews chapter 11 is all about faith, and the first verse says something important about it: "faith is the evidence of things unseen." If faith is the evidence in things unseen, it can't be merely a belief in it. Evidence is proof. A belief is not proof of anything.

If I tell you that I believe that I am the best writer in the world, would that convince you? I strongly doubt it. I would have to show you a sample of every single writer in the world, and then demonstrate my own writing. That would be evidence, either for or against me.

So if faith is evidence, then that means it has to be more than belief. However, faith is belief. Hebrews 11 describes faith later on as being belief. So was the writer of Hebrews completely wrong? I don't think so--I think that we are lacking something when we define faith as belief in the unseen.

Here is my definition: faith is a belief in the unseen inspired by the unseen thing. This means that faith is a belief in God that is created in us by God. So how about this one: if faith without works is dead, then do the works justify the faith, or does the faith create the works? But that's a question for tomorrow.

Goodbye, valiant reader,
Mitchell