Faith

Some quick thoughts on faith. One of the key lines in the New Testament is “Increase my faith.” Jesus even gets surprisingly harsh saying of people “O ye of little faith”, or “faithless and perverse generation”, and also that he “marvelled at their unbelief.” By contrast he says that virtually anything can be done by us if we are in faith. Faith plugs us directly into the Holy Spirit of God, just as an electrical device is very different if plugged in or not plugged in. Thus goes far deeper than simply a statement of belief, but deep into oneself at the core. 

So what is the very first temptation of the Bible in Genesis? Eve tells the serpent God said not to eat of a certain tree of death will follow. The serpent tells her “You will not die,” and essentially tempts her with power. The substance of the temptation is, at least for my purposes, a bit besides the point. The essence is that the serpent has called God a liar, and got Adam and Eve acquiesce in this. The actions that follow are the inevitable chaos that follow this rupture in faith. Thus the immensity of “Increase my faith.” Everything that increases it is good, everything that diminishes it bad - though of course all this can be effected apparently very indirectly. Perhaps another way of putting it is if something is increasing or diminishing the vitality of the spirit, though again all can be seemingly indirect.

Look at Descartes with his celebrated “I think, therefore I am.” Their faithlessness is gone so far that they need some intellectual maxim to try to convince themselves they are real! “Look how clever we are - we have proven our own existence to ourselves.” Congratulations.