Everyone has faith - what's yours?

Glen Scrivener - Speak Life | 11:15, 02 Oct 2022

This is Sally. Sally is a rational person who could never make a leap of faith like Robbie up there. Look at Robbie, he's a faith head floating around unsupported by anything. No Sally simply goes by the evidence and the assured findings of science and reason.

I mean obviously Sally believes that all people are equal. That's just normal and that society must protect its weakest members. Obviously, she is certain that consent is essential to sex and that education not coercion is the path to enlightenment.

she's concerned to reform the evils of yesterday as we progress to a brighter tomorrow

She trusts science and what it can deliver the world. She is certain that all people should be free, and she's concerned to reform the evils of yesterday as we progress to a brighter tomorrow.

Oh, hey Robbie what are you doing down here? That's right, Sally is a believer because none of these morals assumptions or deep intuitions are the result of logic or scientific experiments. You can't prove equality, compassion, consent or any of these values that we live by every day. We believe in these values, we stake our lives on them, but they're not the kinds of things you can deduce logically or demonstrate scientifically. It turns out that Sally is a believer. She doesn't need to make a leap of faith she's already living at a great height day by day, minute by minute.

The solid ground she thinks she's standing on is not the ground of simple logic or reason.

She assumes any number of values that cannot be proven with mathematical certainty. The solid ground she thinks she's standing on is not the ground of simple logic or reason. Actually, the values she lives by are founded on something else, something she might not have considered, and without that foundation, the values she lives by don't really make sense.

You see Sally lives her life based on the values of the Jesus revolution. She doesn't know that's where her value shave come from. She's never been to church; she's never read the bible for herself, but she's grown up in a culture built by Jesus and the values he has injected into the world. Sally has been assuming some deeply Christian truths all along even if she never really examined them, but if she takes the time to look where she's standing, she might just find that she's more of a person of faith than she thought.

Sally along with the rest of us are already in mid-air.

Sally's challenge is not to take a leap of faith through the Jesus revolution. History has already taken an almighty leap. Sally along with the rest of us are already in mid-air. What she needs is some ground beneath her feet and it's Jesus alone who can provide it.

That's the argument of “the air we breathe”. It charts the advance of the Jesus revolution from Genesis to the modern day and from equality to progress. It's for the Robbies of the world who are happy to be known as believers and it's for the Sallys too. For those who thought that they were incapable of faith, it turns out that through Jesus and the growth of his movement beliefs are far more common than we think.

They are the air we breathe.