Faith is a word we throw around with such flippancy these days. We talk about faith in cars, faith in people, faith in fate, or just having faith, as if it's some sort of substance like putty used to smooth out all the roughness of life. It has lost its potency, lost its richness, lost its meaning.
But faith, in its purest form, is a vertical relationship: the relationship between man and God. Any understanding or definition of faith that neglects this is, in reality, not talking about faith at all. Faith is something more, something bigger altogether.
Faith refers to God. If we are not referring to our relationship with God when we think of faith, then we are not, as it were, thinking about faith. The whole definition of faith relies upon recognizing God as the aim and source of our faith.
Faith is not a substance that can be kept and held. Nor is it an attitude or hope to be applied to any thing or person at whim. Faith is a relationship, the relationship between God and man. Any description of faith must take this into account.
When all the jargon and all the lingo are washed away, when we talk about faith we are talking about dependence, we are talking about reliance, we are talking about submission, and we are talking about a recklessly-abandoned love for God. Therefore, there is no substitute for faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment