What is faith?

    

   "America was settled, founded and built by people who believed they were doing something exceptional. Other nations were defined by their history, but America was defined by its future, by the people who weren’t yet here and by the greatness that hadn’t yet been achieved," so writes David Brooks in today's New York Times ( SEPT. 25,2015). What it is said here is surely a Christian vision, a Biblical eschatology.


   Interestingly, in an article I wrote for the Chritain Weekly(HK) on Aug.5,1984, entitled "What is faith?"(甚麼是信心?),I quoted Heb.11:8, “by faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” Abraham is rightly called “the father of the faithful”, because when there was no hope, he still believed the one who 'gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were."  Ex nihelo.  He dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. Utopia, meaning "no-place", describes any non-existent society. However, in Christian eye, it is a place not yet visible; it is a place to be strived for, to be reached. Consequently, it is a "hoping against hope." It is always forward looking and forward moving, and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming the present. 


   Brooks laments the fact that the Puritan dream that "embraced a style of nationalism that is hopeful and future minded" has been lost. Some people now ".talk a lot about American exceptionalism. But when they use the phrase they mean the exact opposite of its original meaning. In fact, they are effectively destroying American exceptionalism." They "take a reactionary attitude toward life." He finds this attitude "sours the tongue, offends the eye and freezes the heart. "


   America is without a doubt increasingly secularized. To talk about American moral and ethical ideals which have their antecedent in the Judeo-Christian tradition.is getting more and more difficult. And yet there are still those who do not want to give up without a fight.
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