Friday, July 3, 2009

Malleable Faith and Shattered Knowledge

Often what gets called “faith” is not “faith”. “Faith” is not a certainty; it is “the substance of things hoped for” - and when we divorce “faith” from “hope”, I believe we get a bastardiszed version that can be very destructive.

Fwiw, one of the biggest theological mutations in the current Church that I think needs to be fixed is the over-emphasis on knowledge almost to the exclusion of faith. (I think that’s probably why the brethren seem to be emphasizing grace more and more recently - to return to faith in Him over confidence in self.) If you remove faith from the equation, you remove hope from your perspective - which means that when the black-and-white certainty of supposed knowledge shatters, there generally is no foundation of faith left on which to fall - since “hope” has been removed from the equation.

Malleable faith and hope can grow and be molded into ever-changing shapes as new perspectives are encountered and adapted; kiln-burned knowledge shatters when dropped.

2 comments:

Kent (MC) said...

Excellent point Ray.

Michaela Stephens said...

I quite agree. When confidence in one's self and one's knowledge is shattered, it is devastating and unless faith in Christ can be grasped, the individual is extremely vulnerable.