RE: Pull up a chair
March 17, 2014 at 8:13 pm
(This post was last modified: March 17, 2014 at 8:15 pm by discipulus.)
(March 17, 2014 at 8:05 pm)pocaracas Wrote: If my wife says she doesn't cheat on me, I believe her. That's a belief. I don't have enough data to say otherwise and I trust her.
I have faith that she will continue to not cheat. Faith in her personality.Faith that she will continue to be the same person... I have no way to know what will happen nor to control it, so I must resort to faith...
Mind you, it's not faith in the existence of some magician entity... just faith...hope... that what is, will be... statistics suggest it is a reasonable faith, as I've been having it for almost 10 years and it looks the same now as it did then.
Also I like to pride myself with being a relatively god judge of character. :p
I do not believe in all the people who have provided me with an account of things I cannot reasonably experience myself. This lack of belief in the accounts off those people (and let's count the people who wrote certain books) leads top a lack of faith that some events, predicted by those people, will come too pass.
Religions did not invent the concepts of belief and faith...
Everything you said about your wife being faithful, I can say about God being faithful to me, hence I trust Him.
IOW, I have no good reason not to trust Him. In a sense, you even exercise faith in believing she exists. Why? Because once again, you are trusting in and relying on your cognitive faculties and five senses to present you with an accurate rendition of what reality is despite NOT being able to prove said faculties are reliable.
The means by which you engage in your relationship with your wife, and the means by which I engage in my relationship with God are thus quite similar!
hock:(March 17, 2014 at 8:12 pm)professor Wrote: Maybe the stumbling block here, is the word "Faith".
Since it is so foundational to Christianity.
What if the word was "trust" instead?
Or, "Belief" (well -that may be too touchy).
Who doesn't exercise faith every day?....you drive you car, ride a bike, fly in a plane, walk to get the mail.
You trust (based on whatever..) that the rewards outweigh the risk.
THAT is faith.
As far as we use the English language -all these words are interchangeable.
Kudos to you.
The only people who see faith as being some blind leap in the dark are those who desire to present a strawman of the concept in order to attack it with less effort.
