Originally posted by wolfgang59Faith is an act of placing your trust and confidence in a person [a teacher, an attorney or surgeon] or thing [an automobile, airplane or insurance policy]. In context, my faith in the person of Christ is based on the authority of the Word of God.
I have no "faith" so I cannot answer.
My wife says it's just a gut-feeling she cannot explain.
Some say it's the Bible/Koran/LordoftheRings
What is your personal basis for your faith?
NOTE: Please NO DISCUSSION or PUT DOWNS or ARGUING.
All honest answers are correct.
Originally posted by wolfgang59When I was a Christian, I accepted what I saw as being the "Word of God", by which I mean the Holy Bible, as being evidence to support the Christian conception of God, Christian doctrine and the Christian way of life. This was by way of the story of the life of Jesus and how it was portrayed as being the fulfilment of prophesies made in the Old Testament. This was what I based my faith on during that part of my life.
On what do you base your faith?
Originally posted by Grampy BobbyForget the mumbo-jumbo.
Faith is an act of placing your trust and confidence in a person [a teacher, an attorney or surgeon] or thing [an automobile, airplane or insurance policy]. In context, my faith in the person of Christ is based on the authority of the Word of God.
The authority of the Word of God means nothing to most people.
Simple question: What is your faith based on?
Your answer is akin to "my faith is based on my faith".
Surely even you can do better than that!
Originally posted by wolfgang59"What is your personal basis for your faith?
Forget the mumbo-jumbo.
The authority of the Word of God means nothing to most people.
Simple question: What is your faith based on?
Your answer is akin to "my faith is based on my faith".
Surely even you can do better than that!
NOTE: Please NO DISCUSSION or PUT DOWNS or ARGUING.
All honest answers are correct." -wolfgang59
Students have faith in their teacher because they respect his or her authority.
Originally posted by wolfgang59This attitude doesn't bode well for the continuance of this thread.
I will ignore all future contributions from you
on this thread and I hope others do the same.
This is typical in this forum. Someone asks what appears to be an innocent question apparently surveying people's faith, and then when actually getting the 'honest' answer they asked for, they jump on them with both feet.
So pardon my cynicism. But I've been down this same road before, with a few different people, and the end result is always the same. I guess the truth really does hurt. You shouldn't ask for it then if you're not prepared to hear it. Seriously.
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Originally posted by wolfgang59You did something to your own thread there, that usually depends on someone else coming in to do, but I will answer anyway because it is a good question.
I will ignore all future contributions from you
on this thread and I hope others do the same.
At present and for most of my life, I ave lacked the faith your question (on this forum) must refer to, but when I had it, I believe I based it on the authority that I saw my parents and other adults vest in the Roman Catholic Church. Contrary to what I see on this forum, the RCC is (or at least was) not overtly Bible-centric. It placed a filter or interpreter, itself, between the Bible and the faithful. Our family Douay-Rheims Bible was only a New Testament, and it was really only my father's. He was quite devout. My mother had been Presbyterian and converted when they married. She was more centered on the social aspects (the woman's club, volunteering at our school, etc.) But she was more intellectually interested in faith, than he was. We discussed things like what it meant to have a conscience, that "little voice" inside that tells us right from wrong.
Lacking faith without malice toward religion (more accurately, toward the RCC heirarchy) took a long time, and was not aided by the fact that many Christians have malice toward the RCC. But I'm getting there.
The OP question is a very valid one, and one that I have asked myself many times: on what does anybody base his or her faith?
I am pretty sure that if I had been born in a Muslim or Hindu country that I would have been a Muslim or Hindu.
As it happened, I was born in a Christian household, with rigid protestant parents. The Catholic Church was the Scarlet Woman, the Antichrist! Yet, as I related in my own thread a while back, I did have many personal expereineces of interaction with the Divine, which have cemented my faith.
FMF relates about a turning point that he had which turned him against, and away from, Christianity. My own turning point (if I can call it that, or rather growth point) occured when my son became a Buddhist, and I asked myself: "This child of my loins is not an idiot. What does he know that I don't? who am I to say that he doesn't see something that I don't?"
So my journey has been in putting my Christian beliefs (which I have not shed) into a different framework, and seeing some teachings in the NT in a fundamentally different light (e.g. the whole eternal punishment thing, the 6000 year old universe, the universality of God's love, etc) . It is a simple thing for me to accept atheists as just fellow travellers on this journey, to see compassion and mercy as the ultimate virtues, rather than BEING RIGHT and having sole insight into TRUTH.
On what do I base my faith? Firstly, on the personal experiences that I have had that there IS the DIVINE, and that the purpose of this DIVINE is to be united with me, and then me with everything around me.
But secondly, that this is the only thing that makes sense to me. Fundamental Christianity forced me to be internally inconsistent and a moral fraud, in that I knew that in my heart of hearts I did not really believe what I said I believed.
But I did not jettison it as FMF did, rather included it in a far bigger picture.
Originally posted by CalJustGreat post.
The OP question is a very valid one, and one that I have asked myself many times: on what does [b]anybody base his or her faith?
I am pretty sure that if I had been born in a Muslim or Hindu country that I would have been a Muslim or Hindu.
As it happened, I was born in a Christian household, with rigid protestant parents. The Catholic Churc ...[text shortened]... I believed.
But I did not jettison it as FMF did, rather included it in a far bigger picture.[/b]
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Originally posted by CalJustHear hear CJ.
The OP question is a very valid one, and one that I have asked myself many times: on what does [b]anybody base his or her faith?
I am pretty sure that if I had been born in a Muslim or Hindu country that I would have been a Muslim or Hindu.
As it happened, I was born in a Christian household, with rigid protestant parents. The Catholic Churc ...[text shortened]... I believed.
But I did not jettison it as FMF did, rather included it in a far bigger picture.[/b]
I had a similar upbringing and rebelled before returning (being brought back) to Christ.
I'm not comfortable with my Christianity as the old man is constantly present, but more significant than that, I'm not comfortable with my fellow Christian's beliefs and attitudes. I challenge myself about what I believe and why I believe it; at the end of the day I've come to realise that I am sustained in my faith, it's not about me.