We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
What is faith?
16 comments:
Faith is the trust to continue moving forward and trusting the map given to you even when the clouds move in and the weather turns dark.
So, faith involves trust.
Thanks John. Do you think that faith involves suspicion too?
Joe Underwood said:
Walking to the edge of all the light you have...and taking one more step.
Jess Ica said:
Something you cannot feel, touch, taste or smell in a physical sense; but something you can feel, touch, taste and smell on a metaphysical level.
Michael Ciasullo said:
Certainty without empirical evidence.
Michael said:
Well, not that you have zero empirical evidence of anything, but it is no possible to be a repeatable experiment with the same out come each time. Hope that makes sense. There is some level of unknown in your certainty.
Michael, True, I like the way you put it. Unknown certainty! I've tried to formulate this as person relative certainty, without that slipping into relativism. The sense here is that no one has known certainty, since the knower is always involved in what's known. A level of the unknown in certainty seems a reasonable view of faith. Thanks.
Michael said:
This is great stuff as usual Greg - been thinking about this a whole lot lately. I need to come back and spend a week or two with you to talk through some of this and flesh out some new ideas!
Excellent. So glad to hear that you've been thinking about this. I'm always interested in new ideas and they have the tendency to be part of the landscape around here.
Edgar Julian said:
I tend to think of faith in the same way I think of love: an act of the will and a gift from God.
Julian, Thanks. I'm not opposed love as an act of the will, but I think it must be superabundantly more. Also, sometimes faith is not an act of the will, or an act at all, but it is more a response to a set of givens. Seems like both faith and love, in some senses, are part of being human beings in the world.
Edgar Julian said:
I don't see how "a response to a set of givens" is not an act.
I guess acts of the will can be more voluntary and responses more required. Faith and love are not firstly acts, but parts of being human that I do not initially choose - they are just part of who I am. Now who I love and what I have faith in are acts, sometimes of the will, but sometimes when I will not.
It is interesting that you, Greg and Julian, are circling around faith and love as acts of will and response to love or a set of givens. I can agree with love and will. There are times that I don't feel in love with my wife but I know I love her. There are times that I don't know if I love her but I know that such a feeling is transient. Faith and doubt are intimately entwined for me. I doubt and question and wrestle and struggle and get frustrated, but I have faith that god's infiniteness, if you will, will bring me through the doubt into an understanding that the faith is of substance.
Carter,
Thanks. I guess the capacity to love is already there, built into who we are. I agree though that sometimes loving someone will be connected to will over feeling.
Yes, faith and doubt are often in dialogue - related and distinct. But faith too is a built in - humans have faith - but what they put faith in is another story.
Greg -
Of course faith involves suspicion. Of self, of knowledge. But when the clouds have moved in, also being overly suspicious will keep you there, not moving towards where there may be light.
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