@farmerman,
Your faith in the Phillies winning the pennant this year is actually "believing" and even often believing requires seeing.
The Bible defines several kinds of faith...
When the Bible says, "by faith Noah, by faith Abraham..." it means good old fashioned "believing".
When Jesus said, ye of little faith... he meant "believing". Because faith had supposedly not come yet.
Galatians 3:23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
Comment:
And to, "have faith to remove the mountains and cast them into the sea." that was also believing.
When the Bible says, "The faith of Jesus Christ", this is not "believing".
No, it is also "not" referring to a new religious group i.e. like the Mormon faith or the Protestant faith or the Roman Catholic faith... though this is how some interpret it.
It is referring to the faith that came when the gift of the holy spirit (supposedly) came down from the sky on the day of Pentecost in the first century AD and began to make its abode within the post crucifiction believers.
This spiritual gift enabled people to actually have an even greater level of faith (believing) than Jesus Christ demonstrated, to heal the blind and do other miracles and manifestations.
To have the faith of Jesus Christ born within as a new inner being. Theoretically, without obtaining this spiritual gift one cannot demonstrate this power. In other words, you have to join the club to get VIP status. Without the holy spirit this faith cannot be accessed.
Well it seems this faith is often misdirected and turned upon itself in the form of radicalism and terror.
People are not happy with simply "believing" any longer they need to interject and force their misbegotten ideas and place a mountain of conjecture and error where it does not belong.
I am not saying that any "faith" really exists... I am certain "believing" exists but faith is a horse of a different color altogether. Noah may have really "believed" the rain was coming, it was not faith as defined in the New Testament, this is a poor translation.
There is also another kind of faith defined in the New Testament called, the household of faith, and also the family of faith. The household which denotes a group of people living in close quarters together who identify themselves with the faith of Jesus Christ. Not all families live together and ascribe to the same beliefs but households often do, else, they drive out those from the household who do not agree with their often quirky core principles (even if they are family).
Why believing was not enough and faith needed to be imagined is similar to how human love (phileo) is not the same as unconditional love (agape).
Take this synopsis of faith with a grain of salt, I find it difficult to believe any of it.
One can certainly have human love or empathy, but to the have the capacity to love as God does? "For God so loved the world that he gave..." To have God in Christ in you? This is why the believers are called Christians or Christ-ins. God in Christ in you...
By the same token, it is theorized one can now love to the capacity that God loves with the agape that arrived on the day of Pentecost.
This is all to imply that in our natural state we are inadequate and need religion to make us whole. The spirit is supposed to replace our believing with boundless faith and our human love with unconditional love.
I think this talk of spiritual love and faith, it just belittles who we already potentially are and separates us from our human brothers and sisters whom we deem to be, erm, "not in the sky high club"... It justified the religious prejudice and bigotry card.
Let's not forget there is also human peace and godly peace. Godly peace means... well what does it mean? Onward Christian soldiers?
That war is justified because God says it is fine? This is where the fabric of religion shows it huge and gaudy tares in the tapestry of its logic.
And also godly joy versus human joy. Christians boast they have more joy than non Christians. This is why they martyr and flog themselves (and others) and constantly worry about going to hell because they are so much more joyful than the average non Christian Joe. (cynical)
