Rollin' Cause We Had To Roll

 

To Continue....

A question occurred to me Friday night.

How is an assertion different from a statement of faith?

A couple of things suggest themselves.

What if I say that God is good? How can I know? This could be just a conventional statement learned by the usual methods.

However, if I have experienced proofs of his love and provision and peace and comfort, then when I say God is good my statement is not an unwarranted assertion. It is born of a personal experience of love.

So, may I say then, that a statement of faith is a matter of experience, which may be entirely personal and even seem subjective? I suppose it is possible to learn faith from others. Hm. Thinking about that.

An assertion may be based on truth, but it is unproven. It is very often just a sort of motivational tool to get the desired effect.

You can see why I am trying to sort this out.

Many times, out in the world people take statements of faith to be mere assertion. I guess in that case we would need to demonstrate the truth of our statement by our lives and how we deal with other people. Sometimes people do notice that.

So maybe it’s personal. Faith is built on experience. And in fact, I suppose, a statement of faith may be utterly discounted.

Oh, there might be an issue of timing also. Faith is a matter of Now.  

An assertion might be about the past or the future, what is to be if you believe or behave, or what happened at some other time.

I think I can say that mere assertion is an abuse of the gift of language…I could hare off again on that, but I won’t! Promise!