The opposite of faith
“Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession,” wrote Frederick Buechner. ”It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. Faith is not being sure where you're going, but going anyway. A journey without maps.”
Sticking with it
David Pennington added
Faith does not mean certainty. It means the courage to live with uncertainty. It does not mean having the answers, it means having the courage to ask the questions and not let go of God, as he does not let go
Jonathan Sacks • To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility
A good place to start is the general definition of faith in Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript: “Without risk, no faith. Faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and the objective uncertainty.”8 This may seem like a difficult definition, but by unpacking Kierkegaard’s terminology we can see how it makes se
... See moreMartin Hägglund • This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom
You have faith (an ultimate concern) if you are devoted to someone or something as an end in itself, being willing—if the situation so requires—to sacrifice other interests and passions for the sake of what you believe in or hold to be most valuable. In this sense, both secular and religious persons have faith. The crucial difference, however, is t
... See moreMartin Hägglund • This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom
Without realizing it, we can call `faith' that assent we give to our own manageable ideas of God. True faith takes us into the unknown. It calls for blind trust; it calls for profound humility and surrender.
Ocd Burrows Ruth • Essence of Prayer (Hiddenspring)
Faith is not the absence of doubt. Where there is no doubt there is no need for faith. Faith is the confidence to move forward in spite of doubt. Abraham could not see the fullness of God's plan nor did he know the timing. There were still many years to go before Isaac would come. In spite of those doubts, he stayed true to his commitment to his fr
... See moreJonathan Jenkins • Becoming God's Friend: Understanding Your Growth from Servant to Friend
Faith, in contrast, reminds us of the ever-changing flow of life, with all its movement and possibility. Faith is the capacity of the heart that allows us to draw close to the present and find there the underlying thread connecting the moment’s experience to the fabric of all of life. It opens us to a bigger sense of who we are and what we are capa
... See moreSharon Salzberg • Faith
Sara Campbell added
Faith is not a thing of the mind; it is not an intellectual certainty or a felt conviction of the heart. It is a sustained decision to take God with utter seriousness as the God of my life. It is to live out each hour in a practical, concrete affirmation that God is Father and he is `in heaven'. It is a decision to shift the centre of our lives fro
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