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FAITH

I want to start by saying so that I would like every one to notice carefully It is this If this Chapterto answer questions you never asked, drop it at once Do not bother about it at all There are certain things in Christianity that can be understood from the outside, before you have becos that cannot be understood until after you have gone a certain distance along the Christian road These things are purely practical, though they do not look as if they were They are directions for dealing with particular cross-roads and obstacles on the journey and they do not make sense until a man has reached those places When ever you find any state of, do not worry Leave it alone There will come a day, perhaps years later, when you suddenly see what it meant If one could understand it now, it would only do one harainstto try to explain in this Chapter ot there when I have not I can only ask instructed Christians to watch very carefully, and tell rain of salt - as so offered, because it ht

I aher sense I said just now that the question of Faith in this sense arises after a man has tried his level best to practise the Christian virtues, and found that he fails, and seen that even if he could he would only be giving back to God as already God&039;s own In other words, he discovers his bankruptcy Now, once again, what God cares about is not exactly our actions What he cares about is that we should be creatures of a certain kind or quality - the kind of creatures He intended us to be creatures related to Himself in a certain way I do not add &039;and related to one another in a certain way,&039; because that is included: if you are right with Hiht with all your fellow-creatures, just as if all the spokes of a wheel are fitted rightly into the hub and the riht positions to one another And as long as aof God as an examiner who has set him a sort of paper to do, or as the opposite party in a sort of bargain - as long as he is thinking of claims and counter-claiht relation to Hi what he is and what God is And he cannot get into the right relation until he has discovered the fact of our bankruptcy

When I say &039;discovered; I mean really discovered: not siiven a certain kind of religious education, will soon learn to say that we have nothing to offer to God that is not already His own and that we find ourselves failing to offer even that without keeping so this: really finding out by experience that it is true

Noe cannot, in that sense, discover our failure to keep God&039;s law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing) Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next tiood Thus, in one sense the road back to God is a road ofharder and harder But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us ho leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, &039;You must do this I can&039;t&039; Do not, I i yourselves, &039;Have I reached thatyour ownThat puts a s in our life happen we quite often do not know, at theon A rowing up&039; It is often only when he looks back that he realises what has happened and recognises it as what people call &039;growing up&039; You can see it even in si to see whether he is going to sleep is very likely to re of now may not happen to every one in a sudden flash - as it did to St Paul or Bunyan : it radual that no one could ever point to a particular hour or even a particular year And&039; what e in itself, not hoe feel while it is happening It is the change fro confident about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for ourselves and leave it to God

I know the words &039;leave it to God&039; can be misunderstood, but they must stay for the moment The sense in which a Christian leaves it to God is that he puts all his trust in Christ: trusts that Christ will somehow share with him the perfect human obedience which He carried out from His birth to His crucifixion: that Christ will ood his deficiencies In Christian language, He will share His &039;sonship&039; with us, will make us, like Himself, &039;Sons of God&039;; in Chapters 23-33 I shall atte of those words a little further If you like to put it that way, Christ offers so In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer But the difficulty is to reach the point of recognising that all we have done and can do is nothing What we should have liked would be for God to count our good points and ignore our bad ones Again, in a sense, you may say that no te to overcoe But then you could not &039;stop trying&039; in the right way and for the right reason until you had tried your very hardest And, in yet another sense, handing everything over to Christ does not, of course,To trust Hi to do all that He says There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Hi in a neay, a less worried way Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you

Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian hoht really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does see which blade in a pair of scissors isthat will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you froood actions must inevitably come There are two parodies of the truth which different sets of Christians have, in the past, been accused by other Christians of believing: perhaps they , &039;Good actions are all that ood action is charity The best kind of charity is giving ive money to is the Church So, hand us over £10,000 and ill see you through&039; The answer to that nonsense, of course, would be that good actions done for that ht, would not be good actions at all, but only co, &039;Faith is all that matters Consequently, if you have faith, it doesn&039;t ood time and Christ will see that it makes no difference in the end&039; The answer to that nonsense is that, if what you call your &039;faith&039; in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what He says, then it is not Faith at all - not faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him

The Bible really seeether into one a sentence The first half is, &039;Work out your own salvation with fear and tre depended on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, &039;For it is God orketh in you&039;- which looks as if God did everything and we nothing I aainst in Christianity I a to understand, and to separate into watertight compartments, what exactly God does and what ether And, of course, we begin by thinking it is like two ether, so that you could say, &039;He did this bit and I did that&039; But this way of thinking breaks down God is not like that He is inside you as well as outside: even if we could understand who did what, I do not think hue could properly express it In the attes But you will find that even those who insist ood actions tell you need Faith; and even those who insist ood actions At any rate that is as far as I can go

I think all Christians would agree with h Christianity seems at the first to be all about uilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into solis, except perhaps as a joke Every one there is filled full e should call goodness as a oodness They do not call it anything They are not thinking of it They are too busy looking at the source froe where the road passes over the rim of our world No one&039;s eyes can see very far beyond that: lots of people&039;s eyes can see further than mine