Someone asked me what faith was. And this was my reply to his question.

Faith is not what we believe. Thats belief. Rather faith is the willingness to take a risk to act on what we say we believe. Thats faith.

So if communities become increasingly risk averse there is no way they can be communities of faith, regardless of what they say they believe.

Abraham is the father of the faith (in fact the father of three faiths) because he was willing to follow the call of God even though he didn’t know where he was going, was willing to provide hospitality for strangers who came to his tent even though he didn’t know who they were and was willing to ride out to rescue his relative who had been kidnapped even though he did not know how he was going to do it.

The disciples were encouraged to become people of faith by responding to Christ’s call to stop being ‘fishermen’ (which they knew how to do) and start becoming ‘fishers of men’ (which they didn’t know how to do) trusting that over time they would learn how to do it. And the good news for them and for us is that, in the end, in spite of the many ridiculous mistakes they made  – they were actually able to do it.

I think we know what we are called to do: to love God and love our neighbour. Most of us (in all three faiths) would say that we believe that these are in fact the greatest commandments. If we have faith, we will take the risk to live that out in our in the way we relate to everyone, in ever increasing concentric circles of care, starting with our family, then our community, our church, our work, our world.

Okay. We don’t know how to do it. But like the disciples we should trust the Lord that over time we will be able to learn how to do it if we try.

But I would like to make one proviso. So we do not do too much damage when we make the mistakes we will make learning to love God and our neighbour.

While love is willing to sacrifice for others, it should only sacrifice its own. You only have the right to sacrifice your time, your energy, your money – not an other’s or what you owe to an other. If your sacrifice impacts an other, then you need to have their permission to proceed. You have no right to sacrifice what belongs to an other in the name of love, because it is not loving at all.

Take care, Dave