I was thinking the other day about faith, how we base our faith off our or someone else interpretation of the word of God. We either trust blindly that they are correct or we take what they say and we research it and decide, either way our faith is still based off interpretation. I was chatting with someone last night about whether or not babies go to heaven if they die, what are the qualifications for them to go, do the parents have to be believers or does God consider the little ones to be innocent without outside interference, etc. After thinking about this and talking last night for a while the notion that our faith is based off our or someone else interpretation hit me all over again.
Faith, confidence, strength, wisdom, whatever you want to call it, usually comes from a thought, a belief of something or in something. I watch people in certain situations, how they act how they deal with things. Somewhere in life, they have bought into some form of interpretation that has either affected them in a positive way or a negative way. For example: Someone who has been told repeatedly that they can't do something has a choice to either buy into that interpretation from someone else and believe they really can't do this or they can shrug it off and believe someone else interpretation or their on that they can accomplish this goal. All throughout life there are interpretations, when driving down the road some people interpret the "stop" sign differently then others, some take the literal interpretation and actually come to a complete stop, while others interpret the sign to mean slow down pretty slow where you can get a good look to see if cars are coming but don't come to a complete stop.
We do this with life decisions and fears, we go to church we nod our head in agreement when the pastor preaches the sermon that our strength, our confidence, our wisdom comes from above. Then when we face those situations where we should put those nods into practice, we suddenly believe the interpretation that is different to our nod of agreement.
Why are we so easily swayed one direction to another? Of course on this one subject you could seriously write a book, but this is as far as I will go with it. It's good food for thought and conversation I suppose.
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2 comments:
First of all, congratulations on leaving that junky, clunky Xanga trash and getting a Blogger account.
It is funny how we come to believe things. I'd venture that more than 80% of what we believe is based on what others we trust have told us and not on any particular study or exploration we've done ourselves. It's only when our "faith" is shattered and we find out that what we've been told is false that we search out on our own to find what is really true.
Everything you believe has to come from interpretation. Even direct revelation from God would be interpreted by your brain as you processed it.
I think this a beautiful way that God created us. He did not just pre-program us with knowledge. He allowed us to be born as babies and spend our lives learning and growing. I think that we will continue to grow, learn, and interpret throughout eternity! (of course that is just my interpretation!)
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