Faith

I decided to break-up these two thoughts because they're really two different trails. "Faith" is a word you hear bantied around a lot in Christian circles. So, in my undying devotion to the true meaning of all things, I decided to look it up! Faith, according to the dictionary, means: "belief that is not based on proof; the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved; belief, trust and loyalty to a person or thing." Faith is to be contrasted with "blind faith," which is "belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination." Indeed, as my previous post suggests, if one has blind faith in God then his or her actions won't illustrate it. And so, such faith cannot and will not save. Another definition I found that I thought helpful was in Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology (I know, a "biased" source! But, I figure it may actually give more of the meaning of a word in the Biblical sense, since the meaning of a word is influenced by its context). It says ". . . 'Faith is a spiritual attitude involving activity.' It is the actions that follow a declaration of faith which determine whether or not it is true." Faith might be something you can't see, and it might be based on something that can't be objectively proven, but it can be proven to be true by the resultant actions. It's almost like a backwards way at getting at "proving" God exists. If He is real and if He truly does change a person as He says in His Word, then a person who puts his/her faith in God should be changed. If you don't see a change, either the faith isn't real or the thing that a person has faith in is not real. I, for one, have seen the proof of real faith in my life - I am a different person, I do different things, than I did before I had faith in God. These changes are not things I could manufacture on my own, apart from God. How do I know this? I tried! Therefore, from what I can see, I know God is real.