What is your faith in?

Let me start by saying I don't like the word faith, not because of the word or its meaning, but because it has been redefined and overused in the American culture and hardly means what it is intended to mean. So I will use words like "trust" and "belief" in addition to "faith".

One of the best books I have read on faith as it exists in Christianity is one called Velvet Elvis. It was also one of the most challenging and difficult books for me to read.

The author suggests that the Christian belief is more like a trampoline than a brick wall; it is flexible and can bend without breaking. He also said, and it was one of the statements that really hit me hard, that truth is truth regardless of where it is found. It was not hard because it did not make sense, but because while I think it is true, I have rarely lived it.

What this book moved me to a year ago was to look hard at exactly what my faith is in. In my days prior to coming back to Christ, I had posted quite adamantly that one must believe in the entire Bible as literal truth, or none of it. What a nice black and white statement coming from someone who at the time saw no gray. But that is the way I was raised. Please don't misunderstand that I am one of those who thinks God is a chicken because it says He has wings. I understand metaphor where it is used; but I believed (and primarily still do) that it is best to interpret it as literal unless it is clear otherwise.

What brings me back to this belief question is the start of a debate again discussing the age of the earth, something I have been quite firm about in the past. I have previously seen it as: either the earth is young or the Bible is a lie. What was my faith in?

I have spent a lot of time redefining what exactly I believe and what that belief and trust rests on. I have come to the following conclusion:

My faith rests completely on who Christ is and what He did.

What are the practical implications of this statement? It means that while I may enjoy a debate on the age of the earth, the size of the flood, or the meaning of a "day" in creation, my opinion or another's opinion is not crucial to my trust in Christ. If it were to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the earth is truly millions of years old, or that a worldwide flood is impossible, it will not change my belief in Jesus Christ.

I spent so much time nitpicking as the smallest of details and I missed the greater truth. Is the point of the creation story that God made things in 24-hour days or that He created the world? Is the point of the flood that the world was covered completely by water, or that every living thing died except Noah and his family because of gross sin? Am I spending too much time being tossed in every wave of doctrine, or spending my time focusing on knowing Christ (see previous post on this subject)?

This may be very difficult to read and I understand that difficulty because I have spent a lot of time struggling with it. And this post, like all my others, represents my thoughts and opinions; it is something I hope you think through prayerfully and in the light of God's Word.

My belief rests on who Jesus Christ is, fully God, and what He did, coming in human form, dying and rising again, as reported in the Bible.

And so I leave you with the same question, what, or perhaps, who, is your faith in?