Faith
I was enjoying a bit of gentle verbal sparring between two journalists on the radio the other day, until one journalist speculated about the political motives of the Federal Police in the way they have dealt with the Dr Mohamed Haneef matter. The second journalist took umbrage at this speculation, and said something like this: “There is absolutely no evidence for that ... it is a faith-based argument”.
Immediately my hackles were raised. Was this man alleging that my Christian faith was something that lacked any evidence to support it? I resolved to write to him to correct his clear misunderstanding of the word ‘faith’. He seemed to have it confused with ‘superstition’.
I started drafting the letter in my mind, and soon thought I ought to bolster my slam-dunk letter with a quote from the dictionary. I sprang to the Macquarie:
faith noun 1. confidence or trust in a person or thing
“Yes, see, there's no reason that trust can't be based on solid grounds”, I thought. “Take that, Mr Journalist!” Then I read on:
2. belief which is not based on proof
Oh dear. Now here's a problem. It seems my journalist was just using the word ‘faith’ in a common and accepted way.
I know I'm not the first to ask this, but isn't it time we came up with a different way of expressing ourselves? Isn't it time we came up with a way that means Christianity is not continually associated in people's minds with ‘no evidence’ (i.e. superstition)?
Of course, ‘faith’ can also be used as a noun meaning a set of doctrines. So maybe we need a few different words and phrases.
Send in your suggestions. But here's a few to kick off the discussion. Instead of saying, “The Christian faith is centuries old”, we might say, “The Christian understanding is centuries old”. Instead of saying, “I want to grow in my Christian faith”, we could say, “I want to grow my Christian understanding and dependence on Christ”. (Yes, I know, ‘faith’ is shorter. But little progress comes without cost.) Instead of saying, “Put your faith in Jesus”, perhaps we should call on people to “Trust in Jesus”. Instead of saying, “God is faithful; we should believe in him”, we might say, “God is dependable; depend on him”.
It's a linguistic re-training exercise for Christians, and it will take time and effort. But surely it is worth it.