Faith

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wittgenstein

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I have never understood why faith is considered essential for morality. Suppose I am a child and live with my brother. Upstairs is a room that is locked and no sound comes from it. My brother tells me that I should have faith that our father is alive and lives in that room.Everyday criminals break in, steal our stuff and beat us up. My brother tells me that I should have faith that our father loves us and is not leaving the room to help us because its in our best interest, its just that we don’t know why he doesn’t leave the room or say anything. After ten years Dad comes out of the room and says to my brother, " Both of you are good people. However I only love you because you had faith that I existed but your brother will be tortured for eternity because he had doubts that I was in the room."
I can see why knowing the truth is a good thing. However, it has nothing to do ( in my opinion) with being a good person. For example, suppose one knows the truth about Jesus and so refrains from sin because he wants to avoid hell and/or have the rewards of heaven. Is that person good? I say no, because it is similar to a gangster that refrains from crime when the cops are around. If one knows the truth ( that God is omniscient) and refrains from sin because of a fear of hell, that person is not necessarily good. Faith ( in my opinion) has nothing to do with morality.
Yes, one should seek God. And God is the source of goodness. However, I still do not see how faith and being worthy of going into heaven are related.
 
wittgenstein said:
I have never understood why faith is considered essential for morality. Suppose I am a child and live with my brother. Upstairs is a room that is locked and no sound comes from it. My brother tells me that I should have faith that our father is alive and lives in that room.Everyday criminals break in, steal our stuff and beat us up. My brother tells me that I should have faith that our father loves us and is not leaving the room to help us because its in our best interest, its just that we don’t know why he doesn’t leave the room or say anything. After ten years Dad comes out of the room and says to my brother, " Both of you are good people. However I only love you because you had faith that I existed but your brother will be tortured for eternity because he had doubts that I was in the room."
I can see why knowing the truth is a good thing. However, it has nothing to do ( in my opinion) with being a good person. For example, suppose one knows the truth about Jesus and so refrains from sin because he wants to avoid hell and/or have the rewards of heaven. Is that person good? I say no, because it is similar to a gangster that refrains from crime when the cops are around. If one knows the truth ( that God is omniscient) and refrains from sin because of a fear of hell, that person is not necessarily good. Faith ( in my opinion) has nothing to do with morality.
Yes, one should seek God. And God is the source of goodness. However, I still do not see how faith and being worthy of going into heaven are related.
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I think you have to look at faith in light of the other cardinal virtues ie; Hope and Charity. Just knowing about God is not enough. (Satan knows God probably bettrer than we do!) Being good is not enough. We are all born in the image of God and his truth is written on our hearts whether we acknowledge it or not. We are expected to be good. Many people who are good by worldly standards may not attain Heaven, That doesn’t mean that being good alone will get us into Heaven. The key is to love God and to do all we do out of love of Him. Faith is putting our hope and trust in Him and accepting His will for us.
 
Believing that God exists is not faith. We come to know He exists through reason. Faith is the assent of the intellect to what God reveals based on the authority of God the revealer–it’s a kind of trust and humility based on our knowledge of the perfection of God and the lack of perfection of ourselves. Reducing knowledge of the existence of God to an arbitrary guess called “faith” is called “fideism” and it has been condemned by the Church.

So, to use your example, faith would be the following. Even though you haven’t seen him directly, you deduce through other evidence that there is a person in the room and that person is your father. Similarly, you deduce that some instructions for you and your brother for living safely in the house are, in fact, given from your father. Your brother follows the instructions recognizing that your father has lived in the house longer and will know best how to live safely in it, but you decide to ignore them because you feel you know better. As a result, your brother lives happily and well, while you fall into all sorts of trouble in the house and live in pain and suffering.

(this is meant to be an analogy of course, the promises for following God’s instructions are not necessarily easy of temporal life, but eternal).
 
Faith is always based on God’s Divine Love and Reason.
you may only need another Grace in that hypotheticical circumstance.
God only knows…

Shalom
God Bless
 
Faith is not necessary to be moral. But the frontal lobe is.

Faith in Christianity is not all encompassing of conventional morality, look at Gandhi.
 
After ten years Dad comes out of the room and says to my brother, " Both of you are good people. However I only love you because you had faith that I existed but your brother will be tortured for eternity because he had doubts that I was in the room."
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You’re thinking of Protestantism. We’re Catholics. We say:

Rather, the father comes out of the room and says to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed ; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Seems like Christianity is a lot about how someone lives their life, rather than just mental belief. But hey, I’m just quoting from the founder.
 
Suppose that I am mentally retarded. I am incapable of forming a legitimate concept of God. For example,suppose my entire concept of God is a giant with a white beard that rewards good and punishes evil. Do I have faith in the Christian God? Consider that Zeus,Apollo etc match that description.
Similarily, if I believe that Joe is a good man and all I know about Joe is that he wears red shoes,do I really believe that Joe is a good man, considering that there must be thousands of men that wear red shoes. How can I have faith in something that I cannot identify? Is IQ a prerequisite for salvation?
 
wittgenstein said:
Suppose that I am mentally retarded. I am incapable of forming a legitimate concept of God. For example,suppose my entire concept of God is a giant with a white beard that rewards good and punishes evil. Do I have faith in the Christian God? Consider that Zeus,Apollo etc match that description.
Similarily, if I believe that Joe is a good man and all I know about Joe is that he wears red shoes,do I really believe that Joe is a good man, considering that there must be thousands of men that wear red shoes. How can I have faith in something that I cannot identify? Is IQ a prerequisite for salvation?
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That is contemplation.
Then second example is odd observation methinks.

Shalom
God bless
 
wittgenstein said:
I have never understood why faith is considered essential for morality. Suppose I am a child and live with my brother. Upstairs is a room that is locked and no sound comes from it. My brother tells me that I should have faith that our father is alive and lives in that room.Everyday criminals break in, steal our stuff and beat us up. My brother tells me that I should have faith that our father loves us and is not leaving the room to help us because its in our best interest, its just that we don’t know why he doesn’t leave the room or say anything. After ten years Dad comes out of the room and says to my brother, " Both of you are good people. However I only love you because you had faith that I existed but your brother will be tortured for eternity because he had doubts that I was in the room."
I can see why knowing the truth is a good thing. However, it has nothing to do ( in my opinion) with being a good person. For example, suppose one knows the truth about Jesus and so refrains from sin because he wants to avoid hell and/or have the rewards of heaven. Is that person good? I say no, because it is similar to a gangster that refrains from crime when the cops are around. If one knows the truth ( that God is omniscient) and refrains from sin because of a fear of hell, that person is not necessarily good. Faith ( in my opinion) has nothing to do with morality.
Yes, one should seek God. And God is the source of goodness. However, I still do not see how faith and being worthy of going into heaven are related.
Click to expand...
Your real question is, “what is essential for morality?”

Morality is knowing what is right and then doing it, that would be a moral person.

Knowing what is right can be known either from laws written on the heart of man, or known from devine revelation which takes faith.

Laws on the heart of man would be such as murder, stealing, etc. Civil laws bring these out.
Laws from divine revelation thru faith would be the 10 commandments which are more detailed.

But I don’t feel it is so much in knowing what those laws are as in keeping them.

When we have faith, it strengthens our will by grace to fulfill them.
When we don’t have faith, we don’t have the additional helps from God to carry them out.

In theory, yes most people can know what the laws are in one way or another.
In practise, we know how hard these laws are to carry out and need God’s help to keep them.

Just some thoughts.
 
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