I Have Faith You’re Going to Enjoy This Article

The Timeless Principle of Faith

This is one in a series of essays that was originally conceived as a book for print publication. If you enjoy it and would like to read more from the collection, you can find a sort of Table of Contents here.

Faith is inherently difficult to describe because if you can describe it concretely, your faith is not strong enough.

At least, that seems to be the common understanding of faith. I happen to disagree.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

I believe faith needs to be a very real thing, and I believe it has two completely different, but equally important, applications, even in this modern, critical and skeptical world.

First, let’s define faith. I’ve found the Bible’s definition to be the easiest to understand and apply:

“Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for. The evident demonstration of realities, though not beheld.” — Hebrews 11:1

In other words, faith is the ability to see what is not there and know it’s coming, based on evidence. There are two important points to learn from that basic definition:

1. Faith is not blind. True faith is not the willingness to put aside reason and knowledge and understanding, as if these qualities are mutually…