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I have an M.A. in religious studies from the University of Chicago Divinity School and an M.Ed. in counseling from the University of New Hampshire.
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Monday, April 20, 2009Faith is the silent . . .Faith is the silent glow of your own soul suspended unknowingly but feelingly in the whole context of all-that-is.
Posted by Paul at 9:58 AM Permalink
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10 Comments:
i like that.
as a scientist and perhaps an agnostic, I have faith. I have faith in the interconnectedness of all things, and the fundamental unknowableness of those connections.
I faith in the beauty of this physical plane, even in the face of horror and cruelty.
i believe it is through recognising our connectedness with another, and acting upon it, that we can change the world.
Keshi.
KESHI, thanks --
and that's assuming there's such a thing as soul -
everything we encounter we encounter subjectively. what if one does not believe in the soul but has faith that life continues in spite of that?
one dictionary calls confidence trust or faith in a person or thing. there's that ticklish word again
PAULINE: "Unknowing" refers to being unable to clearly see and articulate what may justify or validate faith.
In a previous comment you mentioned seeing trust and hope as good definitions of faith. Me too.
Trust is how faith feels when oriented toward the present; hope as toward the future. Each can be experienced powerfully despite our "unknowing."
What I would call faith is our experience of trust/hope in relation to the full picture, our greatest context - the One in whom we live and move and have our being. Some people think of the One as a Creator-God. Some people would see the One as being or reality itself.
I don't hold to the idea of two realms, material and spiritual. Might subtitute "consciousness" or "awareness" for "soul."
In general I'm trying to keep these posts on faith short and metaphorical instead of expository because I didn't feel I was adequately transcribing chapters into blog posts with regard to love...
This is an amazing notion to ponder. It is about living in the "thin places" as the Celts call them, that time/place of suspension where everything is possible and nothing need be "known." Blessings to you this day! J
Simply stated, faith is a believing, convicted, certainty in response to hearing something. The something that you "hear" can come from: yourself, friends, family, pastors, false teachers, false prophets, the world, the Devil,God or, as you are writing about, your own feelings. You can tell yourself something, and have faith in yourself, you can listen to false doctrine and faith in that, or you can listen to God, and have faith in God.
The "faith" taught and exhorted in the Bible is Godly faith, or a believing, convicted, certainty upon hearing God's word. In scriptures, one can not have faith without God speaking first.
The faith you describe is some, non-concrete vauge thing which, due to it's vagueness and lack of definition you can mystify. You can watch nature, or your "beauty of the physical plane" and believe in that, you can have your "feelings" talk to you, and respond to that in faith, or you can hear something from God, i.e. the Bible, or the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and you can respond in faith to that. That would be Godly faith.
All other faith is only "false images". And it is sand on which you build, being washed out as a foundation in a storm, leaving what you built in a wreck.
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