The
Nature of Faith
I think one of our big problems is that we've never really understood
clearly the nature of faith. I think, as I was growing up, I thought
that faith was the opposite of knowing. I thought that I was like
the little boy that C.S. Lewis talks about who says, "Faith is
having to believe something that you know ain't so." That is, it's
embracing something that's contrary to all of the ways that you
encounter reality.
But faith
is not an alternative to knowing. Faith rightly understood
is yet another avenue to knowing. By the grace of creation, we have
been given so many ways of interacting with the outside world. We
are, as someone has said, a wonderfully porous creature.
--From the
sermon "Faith: Another Avenue to Knowledge"
by The Rev. Dr. John R. Claypool
Read
the sermon in its entirety.
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