As Christians, we often hear a lot about emulating the faith of our parents and those in authority over us. We repeat the lines we hear in church and believe what we're told by our parents, grandparents, preachers, and Sunday School teachers.
But is this the best way to have a faith that moves mountains? Is this truly the path to having an unshakable foundation in God?
I feel it is not. I am a Christian, but I would hesitate to say that my faith is the faith of my father. My father is one of the strongest Christian men that I know, yet I don't echo his exact Christian beliefs. Instead, I question the tenets of the faith, dive into the Scripture for myself, and build for myself a faith that cannot be broken.
When I was younger, I shared the faith of my father. What he said and believed was law in my world. Yet the problem began to rise as I got older and others began to question my faith. Christians and non-Christians alike began to ask me questions I had no answer for because I had never asked them of myself. I didn't know why I believed what I did, and couldn't hold my own in an argument. My beliefs began to contradict one another as I tried to mesh my own worldview with my father's faith.
In short, I began to look like a phony Christian. I came off as clueless, hypocritical, and not someone worth looking up to. Instead of bringing people around me closer to Christ, I turned nonbelievers off from the faith and caused others to stumble. All the while, I tried to ride the faith I'd been taught since I was young and called myself a Christian.
It wasn't until I went to college that I began to dive deeper. I began to search the Scriptures myself for the answers to the questions I'd begun asking myself. I took my personal worldview and challenged it, hunting for the contradictions and bringing the entire view into the light of the Holy Bible.
As I did, I began to realize I didn't share the same faith as my father. He is a strong Christian, and I feel I'm well on my way to becoming strong in my own right, yet our faiths are different. Some things he holds steadfastly to I denounce, and some things I believe he won't even consider.
Does this make either of us wrong? No. We both believe in the most important articles of the Christian faith: God created the world, he send His Son to save it, His Son Jesus came to Earth as a man, lived, died, rose again, and will return one day to call all believers to Him. This is the most basic foundation of the Christian faith.
We also share many beliefs. We both believe in baptism by immersion, we both believe in weekly communion services, and we both agree we should have Godly people in charge of our church, community, and nation.
Yet we differ on many topics. I believe in extraterrestrial life, our views on acceptable music and movies differ widely, and we disagree on the timeline of the universe's life. But this is what makes our faiths our own. We both have created these worldviews, founded them in our translations of the Scriptures, and hold fast to them. If anyone came to question my faith, I can stand firm to it now that I've made it my own.
Most faiths begin as the faiths of our fathers. Yet it's important to realize that just as children grow up and change, our faiths must similarly grow and change to become our own. How much they change will vary - some will change dramatically, others will remain largely if not entirely the same - yet this is natural. Only by truly making our faith our own can we experience the true power of what faith in God can bring.
Very nice article!