Tag: Faith
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The Power of Doubt
In Paul Tillich’s retelling of changing culture and dominant human anxieties since antiquity, he emphasizes that modernity introduced, for the first time in human consciousness, the self-understanding of the person as an individual. Our identity is no longer merely as part of a collective mass of humanity, of some tribe or people, but we think…
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Our Shifting Anxieties
In The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich offers his overview of three ages of Western thought and the cultural shifts these eras produced. His purpose is to explore the nature of Christian faith in each time, and so he identifies the nature of the fundamental human fears during those periods. Antiquity, he claims, was characterized…
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Promise and Faith
Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:6 This passage is from the story of God reaffirming the promise He initially made to Abram in Genesis 12:1-3. Despite Abram’s misgivings, which he had enumerated in the previous verses, we are told he trusted God. His trust in God…
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Misplaced Hope
David makes a timeless declaration about hope, faith, trust, and where we put our confidence. He could not be any clearer or relevant. We can either trust God or worldly power and might, but not both. The horse and chariot meant military power, but also speaks to technology. When the Israelites were coming into Canaan…
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Reading Scripture
But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 2 Corinthians 3:15-16 The arrangement of books in our Bibles, in a chronological order so that the Hebrews scriptures are placed before the Christian scriptures which were written…
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Faith and Absurdity
Some perspectives on faith seem to involve denying reality, that is, the world as we actually experience it. Our existence constantly teeters on the edge of meaninglessness because so much that occurs has no apparent purpose, plan, design, or redemptive value, not for us as individuals nor for the whole of humanity. History is littered…