Friday
Friday
Faith Defined and Illustrated
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1
There are two major spheres of uncertainty for all of us human beings. The first is the unknown future, and the second the unseen present. For we find our security in the present, not the future, and in the seen, not the unseen. As for the future, even the forecasts of the meteorological office are often unreliable. As for the unseen, our scientific upbringing has schooled us to be skeptical of everything that is not amenable to empirical investigation.
It comes therefore as a shock that these two spheres of human uncertainty (the future and the unseen) are precisely those in which faith specializes and even flourishes! It is the function of faith to apprehend both the unseen present and the unrealized future. Put simply, faith is the assurance that the future we anticipate will take place and that the present we cannot see is nevertheless real.
Of course, unbelievers scoff at Christian faith. According to H. L. Mencken, the so-called sage of Baltimore, “Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.” It is witty but inaccurate. Faith is not a synonym for credulity or superstition. It is neither irrational nor illogical. No, faith and reason are never placed in antithesis to one another in Scripture. Faith and sight are contrasted, but not faith and reason. On the contrary, “Those who know your name put their trust in you” (Ps. 9:10 NRSV). They trust because they know. The reasonableness of trust arises from the trustworthiness of its object, and nobody is more trustworthy than God.
All this is clear in the examples of Hebrews 11. In each case faith is a response to what God has said. Noah built the ark because God had warned him of the flood. Abraham left his home and relatives because God had promised him an alternative home and a huge posterity. In both cases a word from God came first. It is the same with us. We are not spiritual giants like Enoch, Abraham, and Moses. God does not normally address us in direct speech. But he continues to speak through what he has spoken in Scripture. So faith is our response to his Word.
For further reading: Hebrews 11:1–10