Faith Journey 15 - Difference between Thoughts, Assumptions and Faith ...

Monday, Feb 21, 2011. You have started a journey jointly with us, with the goal to get to know God! We are on our path into and through the land of faith. We have spoken about faith, that it should be well founded faith, that it should be full of reason! Therefore, it is important to think a little about the word 'faith', as it is used in the bible. Also in our daily usage to believe has various meanings.

Assumptions…

1. 'Belief' is used in the sense of 'I assume'. The mother might ask her daughter: 'Do you know where dad is currently?' She answers: 'I believe he is in the garden!'

That is 'assuming faith'. It is different from the faith the bible talks about! We will see this soon more clearly!

Thinking that something is true …

2. We say, that we believe something, if we 'think it is true'. We believe, for example, that there are little particles which we call electrons: we think that this is true! Not many of us have checked this in reality, only very few people can really understand the complete process which leads the community of scientists to the insight into what we call electrons. But we believe the results of science.

We will see that the belief in the truth of something is an element of Christian faith as well, as it is of scientific work.

But Christian faith is not complete with this type of faith! We will be become a Christian just by thinking that particular statements about God or about Jesus Christ are true!

We will talk about two further types of faith tomorrow and approach what the Bible calls faith. ... more texts