Today in Theology we talked about what John Calvin's answer was to the question of the semester: What is faith?
For Calvin, faith is the knowledge of God's good will in our lives (primarily through Scripture and Tradition); the trust or confidence in this knowledge that God is love and loves us; and, the boldness of action to respond to our belief in the knowledge of God.
In the Age of Information, I think too often we stop short of going beyond the first element. We receive new knowledge everyday, especially through the news cycle. But do we really believe it, especially when there are contradicting perspectives? And when do we ever take action?
NPR has a wonderful program series called This I Believe, where people give their various perspectives of what they believe. I have yet to hear one that did not talk about how what they believe affects how they live.
What do you believe? I'm not asking what you think, but what do you put your trust in, and how do you act based on this trust?
In this sense, we all act based on the belief in something - that the ground will not fall out beneath us, that the economy is (not) in a recession, that we will be around to withdraw from our IRA or Social Security accounts...
We all live by faith. Now let us live out our faith consciously.
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