Friday, March 19, 2010

The Difficulty in Sharing Faith

The article in my devotional magazine for this morning discussed the need for the sharing of faith. Now some of us are not comfortable with the sharing of faith. The reason is not in what we believe. The reason some people are not comfortable with the sharing of faith lies in the nature of faith itself.

Yes faith can move mountains. And faith saves some alcoholics and drug addicts. There are people whose lives have been better because of faith. But many lives have been made worse because of faith.

Through faith men hijacked airliners and flew them into skyscrapers. By faith men and a few women have put explosive devices around their bodies, gone into crowded areas and blown themselves up. By faith abortion centers have been bombed and abortionists have been murdered. Faith has fueled opposition to needed social reforms such as health care. Faith has served as an opiate to lessen opposition to oppression. All sorts of undesirable actions have been justified by faith.

And you just can’t reason with the faithful. The faithful already know they are right. This is what their faith tells them. Why should they abandon truth for error. Since what they know is obviously right why should they listen to those they know are wrong? So trying to keep the faithful from doing others harm is an almost hopeless task.

Sharing one’s faith means promoting this dysfunctional mode of thought. Faith is blind. Blind as a bat. Sharing one’s faith can easily lead to the other person closing his or her mind to reality itself. It can do so because this is what faith does. Faith gives the illusion of certainty of knowledge. But there is no such thing as certainty of knowledge. The illusion of one having it, like all illusions, is dangerous. This is why many people are uncomfortable with sharing their faith or having other share their faith with them.

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