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The Many Facets of Faith (I)

This morning as I was perusing through my Bible I landed in Hebrews, where several passages dealing with faith caught my attention. Faith is a wonderful subject to contemplate. It seems like few Bible topics could be more simple, and yet more profound. Faith has several different facets, and to look at faith from the standpoint of these various facets helps us not only to understand what faith is, but what it means to have faith. Over the next two or three weeks I’d like to consider faith from different viewpoints, with the goal of enriching and deepening our own.

What better place to start than that great chapter on faith, Hebrews 11, which opens with this concise definition: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11.1). Though this description or definition of faith is certainly not meant to be exhaustive, it’s a good place to start in our quest to understand faith. And concise and brief though this verse may be, it is rich and deep in meaning. At its most basic level, faith has to do with that which we cannot see or have not yet obtained, and yet it is both an assurance and a conviction of its reality. It is not simply a weak wish or a leap in the dark. It is not, as Mark Twain said, “Believing in something you know is not true.” Though many people believe in things for no other reason than that is what they have been taught or raised with, true Biblical faith is a conviction based on sound evidence.

Faith relates to “things hoped for” and “things unseen.” Thus, it relates to the unseen realities of the past, present, and future. We may have never seen the Roman Caesars, but we do not doubt they existed. We may have never seen the atomic components that hold matter together, but we do not hesitate to sit down in a chair. And we know all to well what happens when you split those components apart in an explosion. And though we have never seen Jesus in person, we can have a sure conviction that he lived and died and rose again. Enough evidence has been provided. And while we cannot see the present reality of Jesus living and ruling in heaven at the right hand of the Father, we need not doubt. Likewise our hope (confident expectation) of eternal life beyond the grave is an unseen future lived as if it in were the present. These are all unseen, but no less real.

And yet, faith can only exist in the realm of doubt. Whenever we board an airplane, we must place our complete confidence (faith) in the pilot who will fly it, the mechanics who worked on it, the engineers who designed it, and the Air Traffic Controllers who will guide it (not to mention the airport security services who protect it). Yet though we do not really know with absolute certainty that they have all done or will do their jobs correctly, we get on the plane. That is faith. If there was no room for doubt, there would be no need for faith. As Paul said, “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5.7). Faith does not mean we never have doubts. It only means that we do not let doubts linger or prevent us from acting on our faith. Just read the rest of Hebrews 11. Certainly Noah must have had his doubts at times; likewise Abraham. But their faith was anchored in solid enough evidence to overcome any doubts.