David Ziegler
Theology Journal: Faith
September 4, 2006

Faith Journal

  Throughout this week we discussed what having faith is all about. Whether or not a man, Holden Caulfield, is a man of faith and what a man has to do to exhibit faith. Through different stories we leaned about ways we lose faith like in the Icarus and Daedalus story where Icarus loses his faith because he is too excited and is having too much fun. We watched the short movies on Deion Sanders and Eric Clapton. These two show how their lives were filled with everything you think you need to fulfill your life, but were empty. They filled their hearts by finding faith in Jesus and connecting themselves with God. Plato’s "allegory of the cave" was another important story we read. It was about how we don’t see reality, but only illusions. We all only see one side of things. Others like us will think of something this way and we will think of it in a totally different way. We can never really fully grasp anything because there can be so many different perspectives on it.
 
 


This image is of the Clemson Tigers football team taken from: http://clemsontigers.cstv.com/multimedia/dw.html

The three most important ideas I want to remember are:


1 The idea that each person has his or her own bias perspective that is different from everyone else. Everyone sees things in a different light. I might see something one way and you can see it a totally different way. No person can totally grasp a whole concept by himself.

2 The five foundational lessons are existential truths that we live everyday. Decisions, colored lenses, value judgements, particular beliefs/ underlying assumptions, and faith. They shape who each one of us will become by how we live out these foundational lessons. Each one brings something unique to how we are portayed. We all make decisions and we all have our biased opinions. These decisions make up who we are.

3 Plato’s "allegories of the cave" because this story taught me a lot about how I don’t really see reality because I’m seeing illusions. It brought my attention to this and I see it happening in my life all the time. I find myself trying to persuade others at times and they don’t listen to me because they think I’m wrong like the man in the story. We have a hard time seeing reality when our society teaches us to see the illusions.



One good question:
Q: If I lose faith in other’s ideas or beliefs then do I still have faith?

A: I think that I do still have faith. Just because I lose faith in someone else’s idea doesn’t mean I lose faith in my own and I’m probably going to put my faith in a new idea also.

To make myself a more faithful person I need to be open to everybody’s perspective and not try to grasp the whole concept on my own. I need to start looking at reality and not the illusions.

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