Even the demons believe, but they do not have faith...
That concept always seemed a bit muddled to me. Growing up in a relatively normal American church, one is usually taught to think that believing in Jesus is almost enough to get you through the pearly gates and definitely enough to convince other people that you're a "christian." Having a walking around knowledge of the scriptures doesn't hurt either. Yeah there's the other requirements like living a good life and yadda yadda yadda, but you don't hear about that until after you get up from the altar.
Faith as a lifestyle, however, sharing in the death of Jesus and living as he did, now that creates a much larger separation between those that believe and those that actively faith.
I wasn't taught to see faith as an action. Faith is a concept or something one names their child, but a verb? No. I repeatedly caught myself during class thinking that "faithing" wasn't right. One doesn't faith. It just doesn't make sense. Trying to think outside my box, I started wondering what the impact of the Christian church could be if more people tried to step out of the box and actively faith instead of just having it.
You're totally right. It seems so alien to us to hear about faith used as a verb, but I think that if we as Christians considered something like that, it could really benefit us as a body in Christ. We can all believe in our hearts the message of Jesus Christ, but if we don't do anything about it, do we truly have faith?
ReplyDeleteHenri Nouwen, once a professor at Yale (if memory serves), among other seminaries, decided, as you indicate, that faith demanded a lifestyle change. He thought so much like this that he gave up his professorship, moved to Toronto, Canada, and shared the rest of his life caring for and learning from a few disabled persons at L'Arche-Daybreak Community. (Some thought he was nuts for doing so.) The kind of difference between faith and belief, that you indicate, has the potential to turn the world upside down. Do you think the Christian world is ready for that?
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