Good morning!
Greetings in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)
What is faith? It is a question frequently asked from new believers to those who faithfully lived entire lives in Christ. The scripture tells that faith involves two key aspects: one is something that will happen, i.e., future and the other is something that cannot be seen, i.e., intangible. Both of them are very challenging topics. No single person ever existed did have an ability to know about future, especially the person’s own future.
Invisibility is another hard topic. If faith were visible, we could see faith, and measure it. Then we could compare faiths among believers, and could even tell whose faith is bigger, greater, or more beautiful, etc. In fact, faith is not visible. Faith, thus, reminds as a mystery. That is, it does not belong to the domain of our ordinary life or our cognition ability. It is far beyond the domain of what we see, know and can touch.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
As matter of fact, faith itself is a gift of God. It is neither bounded by our limited understanding nor bounded by the physical world and human imaginations. Thus, it can free us from the bondage of what we see, know and touch. It directly connects us to God, Our Eternal Father. Then it transcends us while making us start to understand the domain of God, which is far beyond anything known to us and reveals the secret of God – God’s salvation and God’s love.
It is absolutely true that our stature is far smaller than the earth that we live on. This seems a silly argument, but let’s image. One kid draws himself/herself bigger than our earth on paper. The kid feels good because the kid is bigger than the earth. Then the kid learns about our galaxy. Then the kid thinks about making himself/herself bigger than the galaxy. He starts drawing another drawing in which he/her is bigger than our entire galaxy. (By the way, the size of our galaxy is mind-mindbogglingly big. In order to cross our galaxy from one end to the other, it takes about 100,000 years if we travel at the speed of light. How fast is the speed of the light? We know our earth is big. If light circles our earth, it can wrap around 7.5 times in one second. Light really travels is fast. This fast light has to travel 100,000 years to cross our galaxy. Thus, the size of the galaxy is unimaginably huge. Numerically speaking, it is 600,000,000,000,000,000 miles or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km.)
Maybe the same kid might draw even bigger himself or herself by reducing the size of our galaxy to the size of a penny on paper. The kid still can continue drawing another one while even further reducing down the size of our galaxy to a microscopic size of a single cell or even smaller so that the kid can be even bigger and bigger. Yes, the kid can continue this process again and again (i.e., infinitely many). In other words, the kid can make himself/herself infinitely bigger.
The above silly story seems logically plausible: drawing him/her infinitely bigger. Is it possible? In reality, it is not. The latest scientific discovery and understanding tells that the size of our universe is actually finite. Precisely speaking, the universe relevant to us is finite. That is, even if there are something out there beyond our “universe,” there is no way to know of the existence of nor communicate with them. This is not a technological limitation. This is the fundamental limitation of our physical world (or the law of physics). As long as we exist in this physical world, we are bounded by this limitation.
Ok, the physically bounded universe is somewhat bothering, but for most of us, it is fine. The size of the physical universe is so huge compared our human size. Thus, practically speaking, it does not matter. There is little reason why we need all of the huge space. Then we might say, although we live in the limited universe, we can think freely without being limited by anything because we feel like that. That is, our human logic seems limitless. We can logically analyze anything, and we can make a logical conclusion out of our thought process about anything. Unfortunately, it is not. Surprisingly, our human logic has its own limitation. In 1931, Kurt Godel published incompleteness theorems, which described (i.e., proved) our inherent limitations of our human logic. In other words, our logic as a whole cannot demonstrate (i.e., proves) its own consistency. (In other words, we cannot logically think or define a universal truth.) Some of us love to prove everything logically. Unfortunately, Godel’s finding tells that no, it cannot be done due to our inherent limitation of our logic, although it is seemingly infinitely logical to us. This finding really makes us humble. In other words, there exists something beyond the limitation of our human logic and knowledge, which are untouchable as long as our own logic is applied.
By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen. (Hebrews 11:3)
Bible tells the truth. By faith, we understand the entire universe was formed at God’s command, and what we see does not come from something that we can, but cannot be seen. Our sensory system and logic system, due to the inherent limitations, cannot lead to a full comprehension of this truth. Many people have attempted to logically prove or disprove this truth. Some of them have tried to have a physical evidence about our faith, but all these efforts have become fruitless. It is not surprising if we know our inherent limitation of our own sensory system and logic. Even so, even today or at this moment, surely there are many people who try to prove or disprove physically and logically our faith. As we talked, all of these efforts are futile.
Many efforts of proving or disproving our faith have been with us since the beginning of our faith in Jesus Christ, and such efforts will continue despite numerous failures evident in our history, let alone the inherent limitations of the world that we live in and the logic that we use. Faith can be proved by only faith.
through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation. (Hebrews 11:2)
Through faith, our forefathers in faith proved their faith and earned a good reputation before God and people. After all, they are far beyond the world, and the world was not worthy of them, (Hebrews 11:38a)
Faith is about future to come and about invisible and intangible. Therefore, our faith is precious and truly valuable, especially in the eyes of God. Therefore, those who wants please God should approach Him with faith, because faith can transcend all things that we know and can see and touch in this world. This is the power of faith. Praise God! Through faith, we are free. Hallelujah, sing praises to the LORD!
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)