I've been thinking of many things to blog about the past couple weeks but the other day my 16-year-old-niece sent my brain into overdrive with a facebook status. She posted "I am jealous of people who can believe in something they can't see".
Hebrews 11:1 says this (NKJV), "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
I understand what my niece was trying to say, but I think that everyone believes in something they can't see - or don't understand ...
Whether we realize it or not we all place our faith in something. For some it is the belief that we were created by God and that His Son died for us and rose again, for others it my be that life began by a crashing of atoms, others may believe that life is a never ending cycle on the path towards true enlightenment; even those who believe there is nothing after this life place their faith in that nothingness.
Saying you are unable to understand or are envious of someone who believes in something they can't see is, in my opinion, a cop-out. Just because you may not believe in God (or any concept of a diety/dieties) doesn't mean you don't believe in things you can't see.
There are some obvious cliched points -- like how people believe in the wind but only see the evidence of it, or the mass e-mail joke of how you believe someone has a brain even though you don't see that ... I could even bring up emotions and how people believe in those although we only see the evidence of the emotional reactions and not the emotion itself.
Faith is something everyone has because it is what you believe based on what you can't see or don't understand. You simply choose to place your belief somewhere - faith is a universal.
I guess where I'm going with this boils down to that I think my niece is trying to take an easy way out ... and I believe many people do this as well. It's difficult to examine and think about why you believe, and it's terrifying. Even though I do have faith in something it's still scary to think about the things I simply don't understand, and this is where I struggle.
I don't know how to explain to my niece that admitting you have faith can be just as scary as not admitting to it. There is, obviously, an assurance and security I feel, but admitting I believe in something bigger than myself opens me up to more and more questions that don't always have answers. I want to tell her that no matter what, she is placing faith in something ... but don't know how to say it without sounding pretentious.
Once again, thinking of an answer to one thing leads me to another question.
I'll leave it at that for now.
'Nuff said,
Crysania
You make a good point here Crysania. But I think one part you might have missed is that while it is hard to find the words to adequately explain yourself without sounding pretentious, the reality is that it is how we live that will make our point. If you stop to think about it, we remember more about the actions of those around us than we do their words (at least most of the time). I think God understands that if it only took words to convince someone of something, then the most eloquent speaker would sway us all, truth or othewise. Instead, Jesus chose 12 very common men to disciple and then send them out to change the world. He didn't audition them for their speaking abilities and didn't give them a list of pretentious-sounding authors to read and recite. Instead, He gave them (and us) Himself - real life. I'd worry less about finding the right words than living the right life. This is hard to do and will never be easy, but it is the right thing to do. Keep up the good fight!!! Love ya!
ReplyDeleteThat makes a lot of sense, and I have no idea why it didn't hit me before. I guess because I love words so much, my first impulse is to find the right ones in every situation.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Teri.