I have a tendency to go in circles especially when I'm struggling with something! This time it's faith... how do we express it? How do we define it? Do we define it? Is it something we're absolutely sure about? Or is there room for doubts? There I go again! Maybe the only way out of this downward spiral or bottomless pit or any other metaphor you can come up with that isn't good, is for me to look at Jesus, his example, his life.
As with all the things Jesus teaches us, and I think the apostles have come to this conclusion too, is that inevitably all of Jesus' teachings are undeniably active. The Hebrew 'idea' or better yet the Hebrew way of knowing truth is to express it. For something to be true, it is expressed, it's lived, truth has meat and bones in the Hebrai worldview. So, for Jesus and the people in his time, the line between (their idealogical musings with) the doctrine of faith and faith itself does not exist, atleast not for Jesus and those who walked with him in the 1st Century. Might it be fair to conclude that nowhere in Jesus' teaching we'll find an exact doctrine of 'faith'? Perhaps we would, and I'm just putting this out there, be better off looking for a praxis of faith? A way to live faith out, instead of keeping it to the amount of 'will' I can conjure up in a trying time?
So the next best question to ask, i think, is: What does faith look like? At times it can appear as the calculated brush strokes of an accomplished artist, or like your first attempt at learning a new dance and then there are other times when it's just plain messy, and even ugly, undefined and out of control.
Can faith really be so many things? All at once, for different people or even the same person? Or do we need a strict definition or atleast a biblical-hermenuetic of the scriptures that pertain to the notion of faith in the believer?! Another formula perhaps, will this help? I don't know, can I just get that off my chest, I really don't know! Perhaps the Gospels will give us a better insight...yes we'll look to Jesus!
Next time...
AndyC
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
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