What is Faith?

The Bible clearly defines faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, it is the under girding of your hope, the structure under it, like the structure that holds a bridge in place and establishes the hope that it is safe to cross. It is the evidence of that which is not seen. We have several evidences of that which we do not see. Gravity and air are not ethereal. We have evidence of air or gravity. Prior to the establishment of proof, we still knew they existed. We had the evidence of their existence by the proofs of their existence.

Faith is not ethereal. It is not a wishing on a star and believing that positive thoughts overriding negative feelings will make wishes come true. It is a belief based on the reliability of past experiences.

When you sit in a chair, you believe, based on past experience that the chair will support your weight. You accept, on faith, without getting down on your hands and knees to verify, that it is safe to sit in the chair. You have, at some point in your life, seen a chair not hold a person sitting in it, but based on probabilities of the dependability of the chairs in your life, your faith in that chair is confident. The under girding of that belief is based on the fact that you sit in chairs all the time and rarely, or perhaps never, are you tossed out on your backside. The evidence not seen is that despite the fact that you have not examined the chairs reliability, you feel there is enough evidence by chairs of the past to verify it will hold you provided you observe the laws that will prevent you from being tossed out.  You have FAITH in that chair. You're not sitting in thin air, hoping that a chair materializes; you're sitting on a chair that you believe will support your weight.

Now, put that established chair on a place where falling out of it will result in certain death, and the level of faith is probably going to be drastically reduced. Whereas you would have sat down on the chair without a second thought on your kitchen floor, if that chair is balanced on 2 beams stretched out over the Grand Canyon, your faith in it will waiver or perhaps break down, entirely. Over a course of time, given the opportunity to establish that the beams are secure and that the chair will not act any differently on the beams than on your kitchen floor, you may build the faith to be able to sit in that chair.

That's what Faith is. It is a belief contingent on past performance creating a hope of future conduct. It is established in the testing and trying of the reality of God's word. If a person is not willing to test God's word, by putting himself under the authority of His Law, and abide under the conditions of God's Word, then one may not establish a claim that there is no proof of the reality of God's word, anymore than one can say a chair is not reliable to sit in based on the fact that they are not willing to sit in it or that they fell out of it, trying to stand on their head.

Many professed Christians give irrational explanations of what faith is because they are unwilling to put themselves under the authority of God's word or law or risk relying on what they, quite frankly, do not know. One establishes that faith by incorporating the word of God into their lives according to the way established by God. In other words, you begin to obey it. You begin keeping the laws of God, to try to follow His words as He has laid them out, even in the face of adversity and you then begin to see that God is taking care of you. Things begin to work out so that you can obey. The further you test it, the more it establishes your faith' because you run into impossible situations that work out in the most incredible ways. And so you start to incorporate more of God's word into your life.

You establish the reliability of the Word of the God of the Bible exactly the same way you establish that a chair is safe to sit in'perhaps even to the point of being comfortable even if the chair is perched on a precipice. Even though you see others around you fall out of other chairs (like drunks or babies who cannot sit up or like children using the chair incorrectly) or you've seen it collapse (under too much weight or abuse or neglect), you learn the rules, or follow the Word and you see that the chair is reliable, if the sitter is faithful to the conditions of the chair.

One learns the reliability of the Bible through use, making clear that there is a difference in "the way that seems right to a man,' over they way that is righteous according to God. You learn to walk by faith in the way that God has established over the way of sight because you come to realize that it is God that establishes reality and what you see with your eyes is not as reliable as the way God has established, because reality is established by God.

And to the degree you have confidence in that way, it defines the level of your faith. Do you have faith in a chair on a solid floor? You have a little faith. Do you have faith in a chair positioned on a sheer drop? You either have great faith or you lack faith. It is confidence in previously established behaviors and assurances over time that build your little faith into great faith.

Abraham had great faith because God gave him a child when his wife was too old to have one and promised him that child would grow into a great nation. He had the child, every day of his life, right there in front of him, as the under girding of his faith-for the very existence of the child was an impossibility. He had a further promise from God that in Isaac, He would establish the seed of Abraham, and the faith of the past of Isaac's impossible birth, gave way to the establishment that God would not allow his word to "come back to him void' giving Abraham the confidence to believe.

This is how faith grows: the past experience, the establishment that God's word is wholly reliable, leads you to be able to go forward in the face of uncertainty or even in the face of certain ruin, knowing God holds reality in the palm of his hand.

Simply put, faith is trusting God with what is in front of you because of what He has done behind you.

Sunday afternoon, day 3 of a three day weekend... children are sick but improving, adults are getting sicker but surviving. Grandma doesn't feel like doing much of anything and mom's about to blow a gasket. Snow's falling. Wind's blowing. Too cold to go out and play. Dark and cloudy. To dangerous to drive anywhere. Grandpa went up to take a nap but the grandkids are not going to be quiet. It sounds like the vacuum might be broken and mom wants to know why? Dad says it's been acting funny for a while now. Perfect storm brewing.

A new vacumn, a plan to fix the old one, one of the children take a nap and lunch and everythings calms down again.

Kids are watching a movie... mom's having a beer... dog barks to come in out of the snow, unless someone wants to go out there with her.

Its the stuff daily life is made of... the days of our life... the moments that add together to build into a lifetime of memories.  We struggle, we strive, we try to survive, we plod along to the end of the day and pile into bed to do it again.  It can seem monotonous if you start to view it that way but the days go by faster than a weaver's shuttle and then you're left to redefine your existence without all the hoopla and you miss it desperately.

Family is trying... and the days can be long and tiresome and the routine can become tedious but it is the most precious time, to have them there, cluttering up your life.

I miss them being here.  I valued it beyond measure.  They live so far away.  

Imagine

I remember I was still in high school when the song Imagine hit the charts. My boyfriend (my present-day husband) and I got into a rather heated discussion over the song... as I felt John Lennon made an excellet point that the world would be better off without "religion"and he felt that the song was simply sacreligious.

Funny, I was discussing Ireland's IRA this morning with my daughter and son-in-law, how people often blame their altercations on religion, but that they simply use religion to identify the British from the Irish, and it was not about being Catholic (Irish) or Protestant (Church of England-British), it was about British occupation in Ireland.

I will agree there are many problems with "religion" but I no longer believe the problem lies in the religion of man. Let me take a few points from the song, Imagine.

Imagine all the people living for today. Don't they already? As I recall, Aesop was not particulary a religious man, but even Aesop knew one could not live his life without regard for tomorrow, as was inferred in the parable of the ant and the grasshopper. I realize that many religions reach beyond the realms of sound judgment, but it is, I belive a problem of man, and not one of religious persuasion that drives zealots to extremism and oppressors to oppression. Just listen to NPR discuss the Chinese government and the absence of human rights to get a good idea of what government is like that rules from the perspective of practical law outside of God(s).

Imagine there's no country and no religion too. I was very young when I was so impressed with this song and I didn't really understand people. People are pack animals. If it's not about OUR God, then it's OUR Country or OUR Baseball Team or OUR Rugby Team: OUR School; OUR Political Party; OUR Skin Color or OUR Hair Color or OUR Hair Length, OUR Sex, OUR Preferences; OUR Cool Friends, OUR Educated Bookworms or OUR Bucolic Buffalos. We're cliquish; we bond and then we look to solidfy that bond by diminishing the value of anyone who opposes it. We like to define ourselves beyond the general brotherhood of man and when we create a faction, we create a friction... and eventually a friction leads to an altercation. I remember I was reading about the war between Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu tribes. I was trying to research what was going on with them. Their wars are over class differences. The Tutsis are Cattle ranchers and the Hutu are Farmers and the fight is basically over the better use of the land and the perception of status of cattlemen over lowly dirt farmers. The death toll over the years is incomprehensible and they use their government to further the bloodshed. No country! No religion! We don't need it. We're going to choose a side, with or without God.

Imagine no possessions I wonder if he can? 22 million dollar estate back in 1980. Heh, not exactly tent city. Maybe He and Yoko wouldn't mind if everyone was as rich as they were (although it's a funny thing about most rich folks, they don't really feel that way) but I rather doubt they'd give up everything to live in a duplex so the people in Bangladesh could eat 3 squares a day and have a duplex too--not to cast aspersions on their character. Present company excepted, I think most people are not willing to do that and quite frankly, I have yet to see a single government in existence that was "for the people." America came closer to it than most in history, once upon a time, but even so, you would not call it altruistic.

So, yeah, I would say he was a dreamer... and he's not the only one. But I don't smoke pot and to lend any credence to the practicality of that song, you would have to be wasted.

I mean, seriously.

The Frog With No Hair

There once was a lovely green frog that lived on the third lily pad to the left of the fountain just outside the reach of the waterfall but in perfect proximity to reap its soft mist. She loved the way the sunlight filtered through the fountain spray in rainbows and glistening diamonds in the afternoon sunlight and the sound of the Mockingbird's song after it bathed in its spray. She liked to sit on her pad and watch the people walk around the lake.

After a while, she began to notice that everyone had hair. Even the dogs on a leash, why even the Mockingbird had feathers and she suddenly began to wish she also had some beautiful hair. She became very sad and began to suffer a great deal of embarrassment at her lack of hair. And as people gazed into the sunlit fountain each afternoon, she imagined they were looking at the little bald frog sitting on the third lily pad to the left of the fountain.

One day, a little girl dropped her dolly into the fountain and although she wailed ruefully, her mother never took any notice of her dolly laid on the bottom of the fountain pool.

Now, from the bottom of the fountain pool, even this abandoned dolly, with her golden locks of hair, mocked the poor little bald frog on her place of torment.
Late one night, as the frog was staring into the miserable reflection the pool cast back at her saw some odd stringy mass bobbing in the water. She looked over at the little dolly on the bottom of the fountain pool and saw that she was now bald and her beautiful hair had floated up to her lily pad in gratuitous splendor. Carefully she lifted it out of the water and smoothed it out as best as she could and when it was dry, she lifted it up and arranged it carefully on her head and smiled back at the bald dolly laid on the bottom of the fountain pool.

She could hardly wait for the morning to bring its first visitors to the fountain's edge to display her beautiful hair to the public but the first child that walked by shot out its chubby little finger and bellowed out a shriek of laughter. It drew the attention of the entire crowd and soon everyone in the park was drawn over to see the frog in a wig and they all began laughing at her.

Distressed she glanced down at the bald dolly laid on the bottom of the fountain pool and she thought sure she saw a tear in the dolly's eye for her lovely hair sat on the head of a silly green frog way up on a lily pad beyond her reach.

The little green frog saw her reflection in the pool, and heard the shrieks of laughter coming from the crowds of people gathered around to see the bald frog in a wig. Humiliated, she leapt from her pad into the water where she stayed under the tangle of lily pad roots until the crowds finally dispersed and as the evening drew into dusk, she made her way down to the dolly and carefully placed its wig back on its head and lifted her back out of the fountain to await her little girl to come back and reclaim her.

Before noon the following day, the dolly's little girl found her and carried her happily away and the talk of the frog in the wig had died to an occasional bantering of remarks but no one really took notice of a lovely green frog sitting on the third pad to the left of the fountain in the glistening mist of rainbows and diamonds and that was just the way she wanted it.