Where Is Your Faith?

Hebrews 11:6 speaks of how pleasing God is impossible without faith.

That faith spoken of in Hebrews-- I have lost it.

Faith seems to be described as its own evidence when I read Hebrews 11:1; It's the substance of things hoped for-- the evidence of things not seen. Faith is the certainty of something that has no visible evidence. Perhaps author and philosopher Peter Boghossian describes faith best as pretending to know things you really don't.

Regardless, I have lost the stuff. For I cannot sit and listen to preaching and buy into any of it any longer. I remember the first sermon where I couldn't swallow what the preacher was feeding to me from across the pulpit. He was preaching an Easter sermon and expounding on how so many people saw Jesus Chris after he rose from the dead. He spoke of it as though it were verifiable fact-- as though he were there too and saw him along with the host of people he named! Something in my brain started to reject the notion that we can know with any certainty that the gospel accounts were true. I just couldn't do it any longer. A switch flipped in my brain. Perhaps I have been turned over to a reprobate mind.

Each time I darken the doors of the church, I hear the clarion question-- Where is your faith?

I don't know. I lost my faith along the way while trying to justify it long ago-- when I actually had it! Now it's gone; I don't know where.

And I'm not so sure I want it back any more, either.

How ironic! Merely trying to prove faith destroys its unquestioning, trusting nature.