What is Faith? (Adult Sunday School)

What is Faith? Part One How would you define faith? Today’s “Faith” • • • • • Subjective: “It’s just my religious opinion.” Baseless: ”It’s basically belief without evidence, a blind leap.” Abstract: “If you could prove it, it wouldn’t be faith.” Personal: “It’s wrong to tell someone what he should believe.” Focused on the actor: ”It’s my feelings about religious things.” “Faith is one’s personal, subjective, opinion without any evidence.” Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Page 19 Most people in our culture choose to pocket away the concept of faith as a mere personal preference, neither expecting nor requiring it to be grounded in reason, logic, and historical realities. Faith is just something you accept. It doesn’t need to be burdened with making rational sense. Page 12 Everyday Faith How do you know what you know? • • • • You observe physical realities with your senses. You reason to concepts and ideas with your mind. You experience life and form memories. You learn from the experience and testimony of others. How do we exercise faith in what we know? • Our senses, reason, experience, and the testimony of others is generally a reliable source of knowledge. Through long experience of interacting with others in the world, we have come to think that it is wise, most of the time, to put a good measure of trust in the testimony of others, when those people seem to be giving that testimony in good faith. Page 24 Everyday Doubt Sources of knowledge can sometimes be flawed or malicious. • • • We develop skill at distinguishing good and bad sources. We determine the trustworthiness of a source by our past. We never make these evaluations perfectly. We test the persuasiveness of testimony (in particular) by: • • • Logos: logical analysis of the testimony Ethos: moral credibility of the source Pathos: emotional believability of the testimony The church in large part has become fairly complicit with this misconception. The idea of seeking to support Christian belief with left-brain analysis is seen as suspect at worst, unnecessary at best.… but the Bible doesn't ask us to adopt a BLIND faith but a REASONED faith—a faith that can honestly ask the award questions and then go out in search of real, measurable, credible answers. Page 12 [Faith] is not “belief in the absence of evidence”; rather, it is a trust that rests on sufficient evidence. Page 53 Understanding Faith Oxford English Dictionary • 7(a) Firm trust or belief in or reliance upon something; • 7(b) Belief based on evidence, testimony, or authority. confidence, credence. Characteristics of this faith: • • • Dependent on the object of faith. Judged on the trustworthiness of that object. Universal in its application, personal in its acceptance. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Romans 4:20–21 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead… Hebrews 11:17–19a But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. 1 Corinthians 15:13–19 Exercising Faith • • • Talk to God each day this week. Listen to God each day this week. Write down 15 passages that show you can trust God. What is Faith? Part One