The Great Dialogue
of Faith
It is truly a travesty to be at odds with one another in an
already divisive culture where television dictates what to believe and what to
consume and politicians gyrate in impossible poses promising things that can
only come about through your hard earned dollar.
Enter the apologia. The term is Greek and means simply
defense. Defense of your faith to be exact. It is an ancient term and one
pregnant with meaning. It never fights, but it admonishes and leads to thoughts
you may have or have not had before entering into the great dialogue. And
sometimes this means saying things that are hard for the other to digest. You
may even meet resistance but what is a little resistance for those trying to
reach the truth of a thing, even more so when it hurts?
Truth hurts. Truth defines as steel sharpens steel and this
is the point where the great conversation begins; in truth.
Truth is never easy and easy is the lie. Is anything worth
knowing in your life easy and if it were, would you respect it? We all agree
that work is hard and working at the truth is not an easy task either.
Sometimes it means the severing of relationships if even for a brief moment
until the reparation. And thank God for that reparation otherwise we might not
be able to go on.
Faith then, truth- what you believe- have been taught, and
ascribe to. Different from me I suppose with an educated guess and that makes
us less opposed than you might think.
For we have the one thing in common that the common man
knows nothing about. We have a system of belief that makes sense of this world
that has become senseless. We have the extra-added knowledge of salvation that
many do not. And we exploit it, this power, invoke it like the gods of old and
we have come to rely upon it like Jesus himself in the desert for forty days as
he invoked the power of his father. We have the Holy Spirit, you and I. And it
is enough for us.
It matters little if no one understands you when it comes to
this faith. I understand myself half the time it takes to misunderstand others,
but no matter. I exist. I have the faith it takes to wake up and face the day.
And without that faith I may never wake up. So I win either way. I just happen
to choose to wake up and that, in my opinion, is an act of faith. You can sleep
when you’re dead, but not yet- not yet.
There is only one God, Father All-Mighty, one Author of a
great and noble truth and we his children are caught between camps, leaning
this way and that. Were there but one faith! One creed, one apostolic mission.
If there were such a thing then that ominous world would slip away and be
re-created in the image of its Father. And that is the goal of the apologia. To
start that conversation, ask the hard questions and dialogue on the truth of
things. If we stop, then we are gasping our last.
And I for one am not ready to give in.
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