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DIFFERENTIATING TRUTH FROM FAITH IN THE MIDST OF CHANGE!
Where can we find truth? The quickest way is in one's personal experience. You're experiences are the truth of your existence. The problem is in the interpretation of your truth, by not only you, but others. Experience is truth! Yet, the interpretation of that truth is often a lie if one's beliefs are invalid and/or conflicting.
The other path to the truth is through questioning. This path is more painstaking, nevertheless, it does lead you to the truth. When a person or organization tells you there is something wrong with your asking questions, it should set off alarms (and red flags) within you that something isn't right. Governments and religious organizations often have had policies prohibiting individuals from questioning authority and/or God? WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION GOD? Is God, the omnicient, so weak, that questioning is out of the question?
Have you noticed how many religious people are either at war, unhappy, ill, or even downright depressed? Have you noticed how many people are living in fear of their shadow, change and/or terrorism? Love relationships, jobs, family, work (passion), and one's personal life success, are more likely to be fruitful if one has self knowledge - personal truth!
Faith is having a hope and/or belief. When you listen to religious folks, you would think having faith is more important than knowing the truth. That is shown in how little Christians follow the message of Christ - Spiritual Identity. Faith has led them to making Christ a superstar instead of being Christ-like themselves, as Spirit and in truth. This, probably came from scripture in the New Testament where Christ told individuals that it was their faith in him that made their miracles occur. It's analogous to folks going to a doctor to be cured of an illness. It's the belief in the doctor, by the patient, which assists the doctor in healing that patient.
Jesus, going back to the city of his childhood, Nazareth, found the people viewed him as Mary's and Joseph's son and not the healer/prophet, he was. They had no faith in Jesus and He wasn't able to heal anyone in that city. Christ said, A PROPHET IS A PROPHET EVERYWHERE BUT IN HIS OWN HOMETOWN!
SPIRITUALITY CAME LONG BEFORE RELIGION. SPIRITUALITY IS REALITY! RELIGION IS MAN'S INTERPRETATION OF SPIRITUALITY -THUS THE NUMBER OF RELIGIONS AND DENOMINATIONS!
Christ is the Truth, beyond any religious connotations, and attempted to pass the truth on to the rest of us in his Sermon On The Mount. He discussed how we are believers, and how everything was possible to those who believe. He mentioned how God is Spirit, and those who wish to worship God, must do so in Spirit, and in truth. Notice he didn't say `IN FAITH? Notice he talks of a Spirit identity? If you don't know your Spiritual identity, how does one worship or experience God? He also told us what Spiritual Law is - Love, Sowing & Reaping, Asking and Receiving, Seeking and Finding, Knocking and Opening Doors. The Kingdom is within us!
This is where your personal truth (self knowledge) comes into play. Through self knowledge, one is led to one's Spiritual identity. Self knowledge is like moving into a massive home, already fully furnished, with more rooms than you can count contained on many levels. Now, in your first explorations within yourself, you enter each room acquainting yourself with items that are all you in each room. Symbolism is a major language of your inner world - especially your dreams. It's key to understanding you! I'll do an entry on symbolism soon.
The problem with faith is that it can be based on conflicting and/or invalid beliefs. Case in point, in our current economic circumstances, people had faith in pension plans, 401k's, retirement plans, stocks, bonds, and jobs that have dissipated or have disappeared. Having faith did nothing to prevent what happened. Knowing the truth of what was happening (as we have been revealing since March '06) could have saved many from financial catastrophe. Truth beats faith everytime! Faith can fail, truth doesn't!
Collective truth comes from assembling clusters of collective perspectives of personal truth. Being able to put yourself in the shoes of others is part of the ability one has through self knowledge. We are all alike, walking in another pair of cultural, economic, and social shoes with our own set of beliefs. So to get another perspective is a matter of merging with their circumstances.
Besides knowing my own personal truth, I'm able to see in clusters of perspectives, rather than just my own, giving me a much larger vision of reality. The greater the number of perspectives one can muster, the greater their vision of reality. This is something we all can do with practice.
We all have the capability of seeking, finding, learning and disseminating the truth. If the way to self knowledge (personal truth) is through questioning, why wouldn't the same technique be necessary to discover the truth in physical reality? YOUR PHYSICAL REALITY IS A REFLECTION OF YOU!
QUESTION EVERYTHING! THAT'S WHERE THE TRUTH RESIDES.
Actually, in the Bible faith is more about trust than about believing
stuff. As such, it obviously makes a difference how trustworthy the person
or thing is that you have faith in. You can put your trust in financial
products, or political ideologies, or local opinion-formers, or in Jesus of
Nazereth who claimed to be "the way, the truth and the life". When you act
on that faith/trust you find out, sooner or later, how securely based your
faith is.
BlackPhi, I agree with you that all faith is not equal. However, putting
one's faith in Christ was a substitute for not being aware of one's Spirit
identity. Christ was the physical embodiment of Spirit and the conduit to
those who didn't believe they had a Spirit, or was unaware of their Spirit.
Faith in Christ alone is not complete because Jesus is only one part of the
Trinity. In the same way, each of us received the Spirit after Jesus has
gone back to the Father. So I guess putting faith in oneself is also
believing that we are of God, that we are children of God, in the sense
that we received part of His Spirit.