Jesus & faith
Jesus taught that one should have trust in the LORD as a loving father. He advocated a level of childlike trust with no fretting for the morrow. By Jesus’ day, centuries of Jewish tradition had established that Jews were to trust in the LORD even when he seemed to have turned his back on his chosen people. In either case, this “trust” is generally translated “faith.” According to Christianity, the proper attitude toward Christ is one of faith. Adoration and gratitude are nice and have their places, but Christians have established faith as the basis of the relationship between the believer and God. The concept of “faith” has come to mean especially blind faith in the unprovable or even in the demonstrably false. Among world religions, only Islam extols the virtue of faith the way Christianity does.
Christians and post-Christians often use the term “faith” as a synonym for “religion,” or maybe as a euphemism for it. One might speak of a public school being responsible to respect children of various “faiths.” But faith, as Christians and Muslims know it, doesn’t appear in other religions. Native American shamanic beliefs and practices constitute a religion but there’s no “faith” in a western sense. In regular cultures, “faith” means something like “steadfast trust.” It means truth to an oath or vow. Being faithful means being true to one’s word. Prudent people put their faith in those others who have proven to be faithful. The original concept of faith is trust in someone or something that earns (or seems to earn) that trust.
But in Christian, post-Christian, and Christian-derived cultures, “faith” has taken on a new meaning. It now means specifically steadfast trust with no hope for evidence. In most cultures, people put their trust in things that work reliably, or that they think work reliably. They pray to their gods, expect blessings, and believe that they get them. In the depth of winter, pagans celebrate their faith that spring will return, as it always have. That’s not faith in an unverifiable God. That’s faith in the gods who bless and inspire your hearth and home. Around AD 100, the beloved disciple’s gospel ignored Jesus’ ethical teaching and based the Christian experience instead on faith in the unseen Christ. With the advance of church doctrine and the power of the bishops, the church placed more and more weight on believing that for which you have no evidence. Most cultures haven’t elaborated this concept, much less put it at the center of religion. With the advance of “reason” since the 1500s, Christian faith took an further step away from faith’s original meaning. Evidence mounted that the popes weren’t particularly holy, that church tradition didn’t reflect early Christian belief, that scripture was flawed, and that the primeval history of the old testament was mythical. In light of these challenges, Christian faith changed from faith in a God that is ultimately unprovable to faith in a God whose church and scripture are frankly at odds with expert knowledge. In the US today, for example, most Christians have faith in Adam and Eve.
Faith has long been a politically useful angle because it can be readily faked. If being Christian required humility, charity, and unstinting generosity, the bishops would have had a really hard time getting pagan kings and their populations to convert. Would the Goths have become pacifists en masse? Would the Charlemagne and the Franks have taken to loving their enemies? No. But as long as “faith” amounts to little more than verbal assent to some doctrine, it’s pretty easy for the pagans to convert, at least on paper.
The Jews started down the path of faith, a path that Christians later pursued to great lengths. For the pagans who lived in the first 1000 years BC, faith in their gods was conditional. They had faith in their gods as long as their gods protected and supported them. When a more powerful god would send a more powerful nation against them and defeat them, the losers would give up their loser gods and adopt the winner gods. This is common sense faith. People tend to be faithful to those who are faithful to them, and they drop gods that don’t hold up their end. The Jews, however, had another way of looking at it. When a mightier nation defeated them, they said that it was all the LORD’s plan, and that the enemy nation was doing the LORD’s work. When the LORD sets someone against Israel, the Hebrew scriptures often refer to this divinely-ordained enemy as a “satan,” literally “adversary,” such as Hadad the Edomite in the book of Kings. This development changed everything because it meant that the Jews were now supposed to keep the faith with the LORD even when the LORD was having some pagan warlord crush them underfoot. While pagans kept their faith with the gods that brought them victory and prosperity, the Jews kept their faith with a god who led them into punishment. Even so, the Jews trusted that their god would redeem and restore them. This faith in the unseen future was the start of faith as Christians and Muslims know it. The Jewish question of faith wasn’t whether the LORD existed. That’s a more recent version of “faith.” Instead, they had faith that it was worth holding up their part of the covenant even when the LORD was letting them twist in the wind. It was faith in a promised but unseen future, and it led the way to Christian faith in a promised but unseen Second Coming.
Appropriately enough, the winter solstice celebrations of the European pagans were an expression of faith, of a sort. When the sun was low, the day short, and food rationed, the pagans celebrations professed their faith in the return of the sun and in the new life of the upcoming spring. Now the winter solstice festivals are called Christmas and given a Christian veneer. See Christmas.
The canonical three Christian virtues are faith, hope, and charity (or love); see also charity and hope.
Despite a reliance on faith, Christians have sometimes endeavored to prove that Jesus is God; see proof.
Link to web site.
Christians and post-Christians often use the term “faith” as a synonym for “religion,” or maybe as a euphemism for it. One might speak of a public school being responsible to respect children of various “faiths.” But faith, as Christians and Muslims know it, doesn’t appear in other religions. Native American shamanic beliefs and practices constitute a religion but there’s no “faith” in a western sense. In regular cultures, “faith” means something like “steadfast trust.” It means truth to an oath or vow. Being faithful means being true to one’s word. Prudent people put their faith in those others who have proven to be faithful. The original concept of faith is trust in someone or something that earns (or seems to earn) that trust.
But in Christian, post-Christian, and Christian-derived cultures, “faith” has taken on a new meaning. It now means specifically steadfast trust with no hope for evidence. In most cultures, people put their trust in things that work reliably, or that they think work reliably. They pray to their gods, expect blessings, and believe that they get them. In the depth of winter, pagans celebrate their faith that spring will return, as it always have. That’s not faith in an unverifiable God. That’s faith in the gods who bless and inspire your hearth and home. Around AD 100, the beloved disciple’s gospel ignored Jesus’ ethical teaching and based the Christian experience instead on faith in the unseen Christ. With the advance of church doctrine and the power of the bishops, the church placed more and more weight on believing that for which you have no evidence. Most cultures haven’t elaborated this concept, much less put it at the center of religion. With the advance of “reason” since the 1500s, Christian faith took an further step away from faith’s original meaning. Evidence mounted that the popes weren’t particularly holy, that church tradition didn’t reflect early Christian belief, that scripture was flawed, and that the primeval history of the old testament was mythical. In light of these challenges, Christian faith changed from faith in a God that is ultimately unprovable to faith in a God whose church and scripture are frankly at odds with expert knowledge. In the US today, for example, most Christians have faith in Adam and Eve.
Faith has long been a politically useful angle because it can be readily faked. If being Christian required humility, charity, and unstinting generosity, the bishops would have had a really hard time getting pagan kings and their populations to convert. Would the Goths have become pacifists en masse? Would the Charlemagne and the Franks have taken to loving their enemies? No. But as long as “faith” amounts to little more than verbal assent to some doctrine, it’s pretty easy for the pagans to convert, at least on paper.
The Jews started down the path of faith, a path that Christians later pursued to great lengths. For the pagans who lived in the first 1000 years BC, faith in their gods was conditional. They had faith in their gods as long as their gods protected and supported them. When a more powerful god would send a more powerful nation against them and defeat them, the losers would give up their loser gods and adopt the winner gods. This is common sense faith. People tend to be faithful to those who are faithful to them, and they drop gods that don’t hold up their end. The Jews, however, had another way of looking at it. When a mightier nation defeated them, they said that it was all the LORD’s plan, and that the enemy nation was doing the LORD’s work. When the LORD sets someone against Israel, the Hebrew scriptures often refer to this divinely-ordained enemy as a “satan,” literally “adversary,” such as Hadad the Edomite in the book of Kings. This development changed everything because it meant that the Jews were now supposed to keep the faith with the LORD even when the LORD was having some pagan warlord crush them underfoot. While pagans kept their faith with the gods that brought them victory and prosperity, the Jews kept their faith with a god who led them into punishment. Even so, the Jews trusted that their god would redeem and restore them. This faith in the unseen future was the start of faith as Christians and Muslims know it. The Jewish question of faith wasn’t whether the LORD existed. That’s a more recent version of “faith.” Instead, they had faith that it was worth holding up their part of the covenant even when the LORD was letting them twist in the wind. It was faith in a promised but unseen future, and it led the way to Christian faith in a promised but unseen Second Coming.
Appropriately enough, the winter solstice celebrations of the European pagans were an expression of faith, of a sort. When the sun was low, the day short, and food rationed, the pagans celebrations professed their faith in the return of the sun and in the new life of the upcoming spring. Now the winter solstice festivals are called Christmas and given a Christian veneer. See Christmas.
The canonical three Christian virtues are faith, hope, and charity (or love); see also charity and hope.
Despite a reliance on faith, Christians have sometimes endeavored to prove that Jesus is God; see proof.
Link to web site.