While reading another blog this morning I came across this definition for faith, and I quite enjoyed it:

    Faith is a recognition of human limitation followed by an attitude of openness and trust towards the unknown.

This is not specific to religious faith, although it does encompass it. What are the things we have faith in?

I have faith in people / relationships. I have faith in the trust I have given to my wife and the openess I share with my friends. Faith that it will not be betrayed.

I have faith in some institutions. I have faith in the trust I've given to my insurance company to pay out when something bad happens.

I have faith in God. I have faith that when he says he will never leave me or forsake me that he will keep his word.


I've written previously that all love is an exercise in faith, faith begins on the cusp of the known and the unknown.

Blind faith is false faith. To say I trust a person with my secrets when I do not have a relationship with them or to hand my money to a bank with fresh paint on the sign is blind faith. These are foolish applications of faith because you have no basis for trust, no basis for openness and no recourse is your risk turns out to be a misstep.

For faith to be, it needs to have it's basis in an objective reality out of our experiences. I have faith in my wife and confidence in our relationship because it has been proven in a growing relationship. At first we took tentative steps of friendship, then we allowed ourselves to open of wider and wider building on the trust before. But when I asked her to marry me, it was at that point I saw the limitation of myself and needed an attitude of openness and trust towards the unknown. This is faith.

Each day from there is an exercise in faith, it is unknown and unknowable. To try and harness and control it would kill the relationship.

One day a shepherd walked in the desert places and came across a bush burning, but not being consumed. He came close and heard a voice speaking out of it. "Take off your shoes, your on Holy ground". And there begins a new relationship. Moses walked with God, starting with the experiential then moving towards a place of trust where he could be open to the unknown. This is faith.

Our faith in God is not blind, it is not misplaced because it has a basis in something real. From there we move to the unknown.

How has this happened in your life?

My life, my faith comes not blindly but from experience. It comes from God showing me that he is trustworthy and using that as a springboard into the unknown. My faith in God is a recognition of my own limitation followed by an attitude of openness and trust towards the unknown.

All love is an exercise in faith.

A few conversations recently reminded me of this truth. One with an atheist believer, another with a Christian believer.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. - 1 John 4:7-9

My atheist believing friend wanted proof of God so I asked him if he loved his children. Of course he said yes (atheists are not monsters after all) so I shared with him the passage above.

Love is a strange action. I say action, not thought or feeling because to love requires you to act. You can't say that you love your children then give them a rock when they ask for something to eat. Your love is borne out in your actions. Each day I wake up and choose to love my wife more this day then the one before.

Love is an action that binds people together but love is an exercise in faith.

To love much is to risk much. When I give my heart to another in love I am risking hurt, rejection, ridicule and so much more.

When God loves us He exercises faith in it being returned to Him. And when we love God, we exercise our faith that He will hold fast to us and never let us go.

I've recently been challenged to think about whether our faith should be a public or private affair. To generalize both positions:

Some people advocate that our faith should be a public as possible. That we should shout it from the rooftops and insert it into all parts of life, whether it's wanted or not. These people advocate a faith that not only informs the conscience but writes public policy.

Advocates of private faith believe we should keep our faith out of public life, off the T.V., out of politics and some even go to the extreme that it would be wrong to evangelize or even speak to another person about our faith in case we accidentally convert them.

I learned early on in my life that when confronted with two extremes we are more than likely missing the point. It seems a tool of the Devil to push us towards the extreme ends of the spectrum on any issue and not allow us to be reflective or nuance in our positions and reply. I take that position here.

Sure, the bible talks about private faith, Jesus encouraged us to pray locked up in the pantry, but he also commissioned us to go into all the world and live lives of public example. So what are we to do? How should we live our faith?

Let me advocate this, we should not have either a public or a private faith, rather we should have a personal faith.

A personal faith is one that shy's away from boycotts of specific groups and instead builds relationships with people who they hold differing opinions on.

The motivation of that statement is, as a pastor, emerging or otherwise, you will be asked to stand up and denounce many groups of people, many activities and even products and services. One week a congregant might ask you to speak out against homosexuality and gay marriage, the next week it's drug users, and the week after it's prostitutes.

It's ironically easy to mount the high horse when talking about these issues, be it an inclusive or an exclusive response. There are those extremes again. When asked to address a difficult topic, a default response is to saddle up and denounce a group or through the church doors open and say all are welcome.

A personal faith does something different, it seeks to intentionally build relationships with those we are being called to single out, and an emerging pastor will lead those who follow them to do the same.

By way of example, I used to have a very slanted view of prostitutes and prostitution. I was very against prostitution but I also held the prostitute in very low esteem, something not someone, and certainly not a person worthy of my time.

Since then I have made an effort to meet those in the trade; firstly to see them as people and then to understand why they are where they are and what help I may offer to them. Doing so has not made me regard prostitution favorably, if anything it has made me even more angry about it, because of what it does to the practitioners.

A personal faith, one that built a relationship with this marginalized group helps me to love them without loving what they do.

So instead of setting up groups of people as our enemy, let us do as Abraham Lincoln suggests and destroy our enemy by making them our friends.