Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the belief that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali is the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammad. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them--or worse, who credibly rebut them--they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful.
Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement.
Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.
To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concernโand to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.
There is something more powerful than any army. Something strong enough to topple kings, and even Darklings. Do you know what that thing is?โ I shook my head, inching away from him. โFaith,โ he breathed, his black eyes wild. โFaith.
True faith rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the One who cannot lie.
ุฃุชุนูู ูู ููุช ุจูุฑุจู ุงูุขู ุ ูููุช ุถู ู ุชู ุฅูู ุจูู ู ุง ุฃูุชูุช ู ู ุนุดู ูุดูู ุฅููู .. ููุถุนุช ุฑุฃุณู ุนูู ููุจู ุงูุฐู ูุทุงูู ุง ุฃุฏู ูุช ููุงู ุญุฏ ุงูุซู ุงูุฉ ! ูุณุฃูุชู ุจูุฌุน ูุฐู ุงูุฃุฑุถ ูู ุงุญูุช : ุจุฑุจู ูู ู ุฃุจุนุฏุชูู ุนูู ุ
I believe in my mask-- The man I made up is me I believe in my dance-- And my destiny
Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness.
Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I've stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street again.
Faith and science, I have learned, are two sides of the same coin, separated by an expanse so small, but wide enough that one side can't see the other. They don't know they are connected.
I was a terrible believer in things,but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith,or if there was such a place,or even what the word faith meant, in all of it's complexity. Everything seemed to be possibly potent and possibly fake.
The deep roots never doubt spring will come.
Everyone would like to have stronger faith. By themselves, the scriptures may not strengthen your faith, but being faithful to what they teach, does. In other words, faith cannot be separated from faithfulness.
Shepherd Book: What are we up to, sweetheart? River: Fixing your Bible. Book: I, um... What? River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense. Shepherd Book: No, no. You-you-you can't... River: So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem. Shepherd Book: Really? River: We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat. Shepherd Book: River, you don't fix the Bible. River: It's broken. It doesn't make sense. Book: It's not about making sense. It's about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about faith. You don't fix faith, River. It fixes you.
Accidents. It's all about the accidents.
Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.
The man who was once starved may revenge himself upon the world not by stealing just once, or by stealing only what he needs, but by taking from the world an endless toll in payment of something irreplaceable, which is the lost faith.
Faith is realizing that you always get what you need.
While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.
