Faithlessness

Sometimes I think that faith has lost its meaning in the world. It used to be that faith was about making the daring assertion, in the absence of complete data, that things would turn out right in the long run. It has been supplanted in many places by the deliberate belief that 'things will turn out right for me' or that 'things will turn out the way I want it' or that 'everything will suit my idea of good' or that 'everything that happens is a good thing'. I've seen the phrase, 'people of faith', used to describe people who believe in some codified supernatural concept of any kind.

All these beliefs are not necessarily true, and the more general ones may actually be meaningless in a theological sense – 'theological' here meaning 'derived from arguments logically consistent with the corpus of the individual's beliefs'. Even that one assumes that the individual's beliefs are consistent and not arbitrary, something like economic theory but on steroids.

So from what I can see, a lot of people are lacking in faith without knowing it; some are lacking in faith because they think they have it but haven't. A lot of people do have faith but haven't got round to articulating it clearly for themselves. And some have just 'bought a package' and assume it will be fine.

Me, I think that if those of the Christian persuasion read St Paul's Letter to the Hebrews, it tends to clear things up a bit. It's just like reading Matthew 10 and then thinking about the 'Great Commission'.