Thursday, December 29, 2005

In Definition of: Christian Faith

Faithknowledge, intellect, trust, interaction >> the holy trinity of faith. 1. True faith involves knowledge of the life and times, the content, and the implications of the story of Jesus as taught in the Bible; 2. True faith involves the mind-numbing-hard-to-do intellectual acceptance of the truth about Jesus; 3. True faith involves a personal reliance and trust in Jesus and His gospel; 4. True faith involves interaction with elements of the mysterious and blatantly obvious attributes of Creator God; 5. Each of these four parts of the holy trinity of faith are necessary for our restored relationship with God; we must first learn about Jesus, then accept the truth without letting our hearts turn to stone, then, move to a personal trust in Him, and finally, live a life that interacts with Him. How’s that for didactic? And yes, I know that four does not equal trinity…but I like it.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

did Paul forst have interaction or knowledge or a combination of the two?

jeremy postal said...

How would I know that??? We can surmise from the text we are given...but when it comes right down to it....how could we know? Really.

Anonymous said...

I agree with your analogy for the most part, i just do not think it needs to happen in that order........faith is built, developed.........look at it this way, Peter, John, James, they all knew Christ, His works, saw the miracles, yet all questioned Him at one time........John well in prison asked teh one question, are you teh one or should we look for another, peter denied Him, his family questioned him, his sanity.....doesn't faith come from love?

Dan Richardson said...

Does questioning equal lack of faith? Or can it be a genuine desire to know more? I think that's where the church gets hung up. We won't let people question because they might end up not believing. "Just listen to what I tell you the Bible says and everything will be okay". Do you think God freaks out when we question him? And if questioning does equal lack of faith, how much faith do you need to get saved? Can questioning get you "unsaved?" Ha! I'm confused...

Anonymous said...

Well, the thing is, faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains- what do seeds do? They grow. In order to question your faith, it implies you must believe it to some degree- a mustard seed is extremely small- yet over the course of time, it grows into something large.
Faith, I believe is the exact same thing as action.
Or atleast, the two are so intertwined that they cannot be seperated.
For example- I can have faith that the tv remote will change the channel. I can begin to doubt if the batteries will actually work. But, then, the action comes in, I have faith that it will happen, so I will take action. I pick up the remote, and change the channel.
Note that yeah, there is the fact that sometimes the batteries will be dead when you go to change the channel. It just measn that you've used up that available resource (of course this is of earthly supply) and now you need to go to something new, or fresh.
This- apart from the analogy- is growth. Faith will undoubtedly lead to growth. That doubt that is in the process, well, sometimes you just need to check the batteries- what's your power source kind of thing?
I hope that makes sense what I'm trying to say.
Jer, the comment, "faith cannot exist without doubt" really helped me peace that analogy together. I came up with it at D3 at Josh's house- the very first D3 ever. It was good times.
-Steve

Anonymous said...

Questioning does not equal lack of faith- Job questioned, argued, and wondered why...but through it all He loved God, and he believed (faith) that there was a bigger picture.
How ridiculous would we be not to question life, God, church, everything.
So Dan, I guess you are bang-on, questioning does not equal lack of faith, it equals faith......
Steve- do you have faith that a "remote will work", or are we programmed to believe that it will? It is like a chair, we sit down, we do not examine the chair b4 we sit to make sure it will hold us, we just assume it will.I think that actions give us faith, actions get our faith to grow. From the first moment you accept Christ (through an action) we are told to continue actions, not to be saved, but because we are, and through these actions our faith grows.

jeremy postal said...

Rob

If we didn't first learn about Jesus....who or what would we be putting our faith in? Something other then Jesus.

If we can't, second, accept the truth of what we have learned then we are, by default, rejecting Jesus. We accept something else.

I don't see how you could logically get around these first two "steps" in Christian faith.

Trusting Jesus and interacting with Jesus naturally follow the first two "steps" though they may come in different order and different form (from love and passionate following to rejection and apathy).

Logically speaking....

The emotive response often minimizes knowledge out of the faith response to Jesus....which is in clear viloation of what it means to love God. We often get cults and anti-Jesus spirituality movements that spring out of emotive responses to Jesus. See www.edgeoffaith.com to see a poor emotive response to Jesus.

That being said, an emotive response is important and there are many genuine and authentic Christians who have began their walk with Jesus through an emotive response. But what is it an emotive response to? Knowledge and acceptance of Jesus.



**A side note** You should start a blog!!

Anonymous said...

Jeremy,
humans, man kind, is naturally drawn to something greater than ourselves...i agree that by not accepting a truth we are rejecting the same truth (ie Jesus) yet by questioning the truth, we are developing a greater relationship with that person........
we have been created to become fully human.......how we arrive at a knowledge of Christ can take so many different routes, but i think that if someone is genuinly seeking-they will ultimatly discover the "Way"...
as far as starting my own blog-nah- i enjoy reading and responding to them, but to start one seems strange to me, go figure huh..if you do not want me to come here anymore though, just say the word
bless ya man

jeremy postal said...

Rob

Don't go anywhere.

I just thought you have a lot of good thoughts and it would be interesting for me to read your blog!! lol

Have a remarkable day.
-Jer

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much..........
i sit and wonder about this trip we are on, this journey, how remarkable it really is! people who have little or nothing in common bieng drawn together because of faith in Jesus Christ....
i used to think that if we went to church, lived a good life, did not steal or cheat and only told white lies, that we were Xian! Now, I look at life, the things we clutter it with, and know that God has so much more for us...when going out for a coffee becomes more than a coffee, it becomes a chance to reach out and share with someone else, maybe about Christ, maybe giving them your coffee...and thru that small act opening the door to share about Christ......
man life is incredible, our God is incredible, and even more than that, we have eternity to continue this growth

Anonymous said...

I think the church has a lot of weeding to do.

Anonymous said...

Darwin Be Patient (New Song)
Darwin be patient, you done all you can
Wrinkles still invade the faces of men
Women dispute to measure their worth
The royal navy argues the land of your birth

We're out trading handguns for petrified rocks
Charterhouse bellows for relics from the cross
We write mission statements with blood & birchbark
Barter umbrellas for a seat on the Ark

The tall grass the splinters the rocks and the rain
Are driven by something, we don't speak its name
Its currents fire circuits hid under our skin
Lead us back to the place from where we begin

But the corporal prison swings shut its gates
Our mess comes in a pan rusted by our mistakes
So if you think the world crooked, bereft and askew
Don't abandon those dreams of a holy rescue

So Darwin, be patient, you done all you can
There ain't a schemata for the faces of man
We bend and we buckle, we long and we scheme
We find our release amidst all of our dreams