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Some Thoughts About Christian Faith

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Faith is Important

If Jesus Christ is the true God, and the only way for humans to be saved is to believe in Him, i. e. to have Faith, then anyone who attempts to be saved – if that is ever possible – should at least understand what “to believe in Him” really means. That is, we should at least understand what Faith is. By all means, Faith is what distinguishes believers and non-believers, right?

Right?

Our Knowledge about God is Not Perfect

Believing in Christ is not a simple matter, and many people have failed that. So frequently, non-believers are poorly thought of, but I wouldn’t think highly of many so-called Christians who believe in some customized “Christ”. To me, a personalized Christian-ism holds no difference from other religions. Collectivity in Faith shows obvious denials. If this “faith” still counts, if a person can become a follower of Christ because he thinks “I believe in my god, and I name him Jesus”, something is misleading here.  

There are always problems about our knowledge of God. I no longer cling to the question of why everyone does not have an equal chance to know God. However, it is true that there are many places in the world where Christianity is commonly considered as immoral and fatally dangerous. How sinful is it for a person X who lives in such a place to choose not to follow Christ because of his desire for the goodness? In the other hand, would it make any sense if in the same area, another person Y follows “Christ” with all the attached deviances and he consequently goes to Heaven? It wouldn’t.

The Bible is important and has many irreplaceable roles, but I don’t think it provides a clear Christian to-do list. I believe totally in the Bible, but I also think that we humans don’t really know what to make out of this book. Which part is always true and which part is historical and cultural and is therefore subjected to change? To drink wine or not to drink wine, for example.  While pro-wine people would cite wine-using occasions such as the Last supper; pro-wine-not(?) side would mention Lv 10:9 or argued that what Jesus used was something else. I simply think that some people like to drink wine and some don’t.   

One historical example may be slavery. The Bible seems to be okay with it, but does that mean that we should have maintained it? I have many African-American classmates. They really should NOT give up school now and randomly become slaves. Not everything in the Bible is constant, so it is not easy to pull out from the book a how-to, believe in it and call it Faith. Moreover, we shouldn’t have to.

Not Everyone Reads the Bible

Noah didn’t need it. There should not be much information going around in his era, and Jesus hadn’t made His Sacrifice. Yet God considered Noah righteous (Ge 6:9). Hm, how did he do that? My best guess is that right after the Fall of Men, humans were so dense that most of them failed to reach what would be common sense to us now.

The Bible doesn’t give us (initial) Faith, and self-declaration doesn’t create Faith. If Faith is something crucial that God wants us to have, and if God is good, then the true Faith should be better defined.

Faith, therefore, should not be about whether a person believes in God in a correct manner. It should be defined as a decision of a person to accept God when he ultimately has his chance to do so.

True Christians should not be defined simply as those people who “know” and “choose” a particular “Jesus” and declare to follow Him, but instead the people who would wholeheartedly love and desire the goodness this very God creates.

I believe that C. S. Lewis would agree with me on this. In his The Last Battle, one book in The Chronicles of Narnia, Emeth the Calormene gets accepted by Aslan (in the final chapter, you can read how Aslan redefines an Aslan-follower). The Great Devorce, another book if his, tells about various self-claimed Christians who failed to go or stay in Heaven.

This post is my effort to share this simple thought: since we were created by Love, let us carry on this Life with a good heart.

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Related topic(s):
A Matter of Trust
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