What is faith? Part 3

What is faith?

Part 3: Medicine for the modern world

In the modern world, this faith is totally misunderstood by many who don’t have it. They think of it as a mistake, a delusion, perhaps like an infection that some people catch, but really you need to be healed of it. They think of it as a bizarre self-delusion, like those who insist that, though they are blind and in a dark room, there is indeed a black cat – even though when you, who can see, switch on the light, there is no cat there. In that respect, it is stupid, just bone-headed refusal to accept the truth. But this is because they think of faith as a “thing” – and as things should be able to be seen and touched, and they can’t see or touch faith, so it must not exist. But faith is most of all a way of living. And in modern society, it becomes more and more vital for the health and well-being of us all that people adopt faith as their way of life. Bizarrely, it is atheistic modern ideologies that are lost in self-delusion, grotesquely distorting facts in order to justify false theories that have completely lost touch with reality, while those “lost in the bizarre self-delusion of faith” are able to see clearly and uphold truth and justice. So, there is a desperate need for people to adopt an alternative way of looking and living and being – and this is what faith gives you. Enjoy the fact that those who despise faith find it infuriating and baffling; rest easily and gently with the fact that we cannot prove our faith – we do not have to respond to our critics: “Show us this “thing” you call faith, so we can test it and examine it”. We must simply draw out of ourselves the treasures of faith – baffling our critics again, “Where on earth did he get that from? How did she do that?”. Of course, if I extol this faith, we who have it must actually live in this way and perform these actions. Neither our critics nor we ourselves can see the source from which our spring flows, but we, and all, can see when we refresh those who are thirsty. And the channel through which this refreshment flows is called faith.