Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
12/15/2021
The false concept: Faith is caught…Not Taught!
It’s become a popular saying but it is not only false it is damaging to discipling the next generation. They are trying to say that faith is a matter of the heart, not a cold belief in a set of facts that someone taught them. It implies that our kid’s spiritual development has little to do with the intellectual stuff of apologetics, vs living our faith out in front of them. (apologetics is the study of why there’s good reason to believe Christianity is true).
Faith, in its most basic sense, is trust.
Blind faith has little or no justification. Blind faith is claiming there is an invisible easter bunny delivering eggs in the front yard. When you ask what reason I have for such belief, I tell you I just have faith no reasons. Wow, blind faith without reason.
At the other end of the faith, meter is a person trusting in something they have good reason to believe is true. I am willing to board an airplane and I have faith I will arrive safely. I can’t be certain, but I have more than a good reason to place trust in the process.
Importantly, this means that faith is not a way of knowing something. It’s how you respond to what you know. This is such an important distinction. Atheists often suggest that faith is inferior to science as a way of knowing about the world, but faith isn’t a way of knowing about the world at all. It’s trust that we place in Jesus in response to what we know about the world (and that knowledge comes from many sources).
In short, biblical faith is not blind faith. Biblical faith is trusting in what we have good reason to believe is true, based on the extensive evidence God has given us.
1. It emphasizes passing on our trust rather than the reasons for our trust.
Our trust in Jesus may or may not rub off on our kids, but regardless, that shouldn’t be our primary goal in discipleship. It’s worth a side note here that parents shouldn’t assume a well-lived Christian faith is even desirable to their kids. There are numerous kids who grow up in loving Christian homes, with parents who truly “walk the walk,” but abandon their faith. Why? Those kids might admire the sincerity of their parents’ convictions but feel no desire to “catch” that same faith because they don’t believe it’s built on good reason.
Once again, this points back to the need to pass on the reasons for the hope we have (1 Peter 3:15), not simply our own trust.
Tomorrow, A deeper understanding of the reasons for faith is not something that’s simply “caught.”
** Speak the Name Dove Awards Performance feat. Natalie Grant Koryn Hawthorne
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7ot7WPhIJc
Excerpts are taken from Natasha Crain The Idea That Faith is Caught and Not Taught is False…and It’s Hurting the Next Generation
