Faith Is Assurance; Faith Is Evidence

I think the word ‘faith’ is one of the most misunderstood words in the dictionary.  To many people faith comes into play when evidence fails.  Faith for them works when there is no assurance whatsoever.

 Compact Oxford Dictionary defines faith as ‘complete trust or confidence’.  That indeed is the basic meaning of the word. Thus it comes to mean ’strong belief in a religion’  and then ‘a system of religious belief’.  

The verbal form of faith is ‘to believe’.  Believe is defined in the dictionary as ‘accept that(something)is true or (someone) is telling the truth.  To believe in means ‘have faith in the truth or existence of’.  To believe then comes to mean ‘have religious faith’.

Belief is defined as ‘a feeling that something exists or is true, especially one without proof’.  Belief is ‘a strongly held opinion’.  Belief in means ‘trust or confidence in’. Then it comes to mean ‘religious faith’. 

 Just a casual look at the dictionary definitions of these words will tell us that ‘faith’, ‘belief’ and ‘to believe’  are not essentially religious words to begin with.  Faith and beliefs are the essential core of human existence.  For instance, if we have strong conviction that eating certain kinds of food is not good for health, that is our belief based probably on experience or based on our reading. 

Human society can not function without faith and trust in one another.  For example, I can not drink my morning coffee with milk in it if I do  not trust my milkman.  I believe that he supplies clean milk without adulteration and it is therefore not harmful for my health.  If I  have slightest of doubt(opposite of faith)that there is poison in the milk, I would never ever take it.  I take milk because I trust my milkman.  Likewise I take a flight because I trust the Airlines company. I work in a company because I believe that at the end of the month they will pay me.  I go to the railway station in time because I have faith in the railway timetable.  Thus we see that faith and trust are essential for the very existence of our human society.

Ordinarily people trust each other based on  personal experience or based on the experience of other people around them.  They do trust because things are  visible to their naked eyes.  Many have difficulty in trusting the invisible.

That invisble things are around us is an indisputable thing.  The air that we brethe and the electricity that we use are not visible to naked eyes.  But we yet we heavily rely on them based on our experience.

When it comes to God, God also is invisible to naked human eyes.  Yet He is real and His presence is real.  This we know from experience.  The experience we have about God is gained from reading the Word of God which is the Bible.  The Bible gives us insights about the person and the works of God. The Bible tells us what we can expect from God when we behave in a particular way.  This truly comes from experience.  Just as we trust people and things around us based on experience, we can learn to trust God based on experience.  That is why the Bible defines faith as ‘assurance’ and ‘evidence’ (Heb.11:1).

 Ofcourse there are occasions when we trusted some people and  they failed us in the last minute.  No one can be a hundred percent sure that the next train will come in time or the next flight will reach safely.  Yet we trust in them.  But one can be a hundred percent sure that God would do what He says in His Word.  Yet many do not want to trust Him because they have not experienced Him.  To me faith in God is more reliable than faith in  any man or  faith in any human system.  That is why the Bible says, it is better to put your trust in God than to put your trust in man(Ps.118:8).