Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Faith, Unfaithfulness and Faithlessness

Faith is being assured of a true thing, that you can believe it, even to depend and act on it.

Faith is belief put into action.

It is like being assured that a parachute works and you are willing to and indeed do jump off aircraft with merely a parachute.

Unfaithfulness is being assured too, but seemingly so only, as you would not make that leap.

Faithlessness is not even believing in such a thing as a parachute.

Of unfaithfulness and faithlessness, the former is the more grievous sin.

In some ways it is better not to know, then to know and not believe. You are accountable for all that you know.

But you may think you know. And then there are also different types of faith.

Some believe for one reason or another - or none at all other than their own strength of belief - that they can fly and need no parachute, for example.

And some do indeed are so assured as to jump off aircraft without parachutes. Or fly aircraft into buildings.

But there are truths. No amount of self-will, or self-belief, can make gravity go away for instance.

If something is not, and never will be, the strength of your belief or persistence of your will, will not change anything. In fact they are entirely irrelevant.

Self belief can easily be self-delusion. And they are all kinds of false faith.

True faith is not founded upon your capability of belief or of its strength thereof. Rather it is knowledge of the truth and acting upon it.

And if the truth be true indeed, then faith leads to more knowledge and more knowledge to more faith, and thus faith grows from faith to faith.

It is like seeing a chair in a room. If by believing it, you sit in it, then you will come to know of something as comfort, the very essence of a chair; for a chair is not about four legs and so on, but of the restfulness that its gives.

And all these you cannot comprehend by merely being convinced, no matter how strongly, of the mere concept of thing with four legs called a chair.

And remaining aloof and detached will evidenced itself as unfaithfulness when you need rest but you yet refuse to sit in the chair.