Listen Here
What really is faith? One little boy in Sunday School was asked that question and quick as a flash he replied, "Believing something you know isn't true." And I don't know what you feel about it. I often thought that that's what faith was.It's believing something that you know with your mind isn't true. It's some kind of overdrive that you push in with a button of some kind in your mind or your emotions. Or, somewhere as "they" say down in your heart, to get you to accept something that you know with your intellect could not possibly be true. And so many of us, in this world today are sceptical of the whole idea of faith, because we think of it as something not connected with the ordinary processes of the mind at all. It's actually opposed to the convictions of the intellect. And so many of us who have been through some kind of education and especially some kind of scientific education, get the idea that to have faith you have to in some way close your mind, or put your intellect to sleep, or ignore the conclusions of science and research.
That's absolutely ridiculous. Faith is not that kind of an irrational
thing at all. Faith, in fact, is something that you and I exercise every day in
our lives. And we've exercised it from the very moment we were born. I suppose
it's true that your mother even encouraged you to feel that we could trust her
when we lay in her arms. And we learned day by day that was true, she
would not drop us, that she was reliable, and we could put our faith in
her arms.
Read More About Faith
Available in these Languages:
Quote of the Month
If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
WILLIAM KINGDON CLIFFORD,
The Ethics of Belief
Is it safe to take a breath?
Read more