Is it time to give up; or get ready to fight for our faith?

Is it time to give up; or get ready to fight for our faith?

I just recently wrote an article regarding; “Faith in Crisis” and now wanted to get into this virtue as we all are in need of finding how to hold this close to our hearts.

Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God.  At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed.  As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person.  It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says.  It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature.  (CCC 150).

Faith and science:  “Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason.  Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.”  Consequently, methodological research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God.  The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.  (CCC 159).

As I write these words from the catechism it is the very synopsis that I have heard from anyone who is agnostic and cannot get beyond the Big Bang theory.  As I try to explain to them that you cannot create something out of nothing, they are hard-headed in the fact their understanding of creation is written in a blank mind that doesn’t have any sense of what faith is all about.

Providence and the scandal of evil:  If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist?  To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice.  Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question:  the goodness of creation, the drama of sin, and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments, and his call to a blessed life to which creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which they can can also turn away in advance.  There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not part of an answer to the question of evil.  (CCC 309).

Of all the mysteries of God, the universe, and the very finiteness of man, faith holds the greatest understanding we might lack because of the world’s influence and the attractions which can hold our desires in an anti-belief of God  We need these truths that the Church promotes and through the grace of God hold them dear in our hearts and mind.

Ralph B. Hathaway