Philosophy

"Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine." (1Sam 17:40). There are many lessons for life that can be learnt from this episode of David. However, one of the most fascinating lessons is the lesson of knowing what it means to have a balanced faith. Why did David choose 5 stones when he had to use only one? I've heard sermons that talked about the rest of the stones reserved for the other giants. One can find lessons for his own life from a story; a lesson that speaks to him in his own situation. But, looking directly at the very stage of the incident, I find one thing very instructive about faith: Faith is not an excuse for not putting the best of all we can gather into our bag. Faith is not an excuse to say, for instance, that I don't need to learn this or I don't need to concentrate on polishing my skills, or I don't n...

"building yourselves up on your most holy faith"   Jude 20 In Galatians 3, Paul asks the Galatians how it had happened that they had begun in faith, in the Spirit, but now had been bewitched to end up in the flesh. These believers had not been careful to continue in their faith. Their life had failed to logically relate to their original faith. Historically, the Crusades and the Inquisitions were examples of the Church failing in the logic of Faith. In the personal Christian life, when the believer fails to derive his principles of practice from the originality of Gospel faith, his faith-life has run a shipwreck. It's like the Christian in Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress who is detracted from the path of the Cross by the Worldly Wiseman. In the case of the Galatians, it was the Judaizers who tried to introduce Jewish rituals and rites as mandatory into the Church. If we have begun our Christian life in faith, we can only grow if we keep ourselves in that faith. If we have b...