Show your faith? ...

Thursday, January 24, 2013. Where do you show your faith? I talked to a friend recently, and the we discussed the ethics of some Christian groups in the late 60th. They told women to wear skirts only, and not to dance. It was seen as a sign of faith to do that. But are such ethical rules linked to the New Testament? Not directly! How does your faith show itself?

Signs of Faith …

There are many things, which people identify to be signs of faith. For example, Christian groups and other religions as well tend to build church buildings. There are towers, which show a cross or a half-moon. They signal: here is a group which believes. They are meant to signs of the glory of God. There is not much to say against such signs of faith - as long as it does not work against people living in the environment.

There are other signs of faith. Many years ago we had a discussion about prayer before lunch in a public restaurant. I remember a statement like: “it is important for me to pray publicly, otherwise I do not have many possibilities to show my faith”. I had to think about that statement for quite a while, since I thought that it is extremely superficial to link faith just to some sign of public prayer.

When we look into 2000 years of world history, Christianity has been the “dominant religion” in many countries for many years. There were states which called themselves “Christian”, but their behaviour, their structures and the relationships of people have not been deeply Christian. There is a danger, that we use the name of Christ Jesus (=“Christian”), but we do not obey him!!

Faith touches everything! …

**

Faith is so much deeper than the signs we talked about. Faith touches our motives. Faith touches our will, our decision, our emotions … everything! So there will be many signs of faith, since our behaviour will reflect our faith.

Everyone can pray in public. Everyone can pretend to be a Christian. But Jesus told us to love our enemies, to be ambassadors of peace, to be full of truth and justice, to help each other and to support each other. These are signs of faith. When we start to be servants of one another, we show signs of faith.

When we talk about faith and signs of faith in our deeper life, in our motives and our decisions, then we are at the right place with our thoughts. Jesus taught his disciples to live like he lived - with their particular talents and in their particular situation. That is his word for us as well - it is the grand challenge of Christian life, and it is much much deeper than the superficial public signs of faith which we might come up with. ... more texts