Friday, June 30, 2006

HOPE FAITH TRUST

In “Ruthless Trust” Bennan Manning poses the equation that “Faith + Hope = Trust”. Specifically “Ruthless Trust = Faith in the person of Jesus Christ and Hope in his promise.” It sounds good at first and fits in with his theme, but in practical terms and in terms of what we know from the Bible, I would like to propose that a more correct statement would be “Hope + Trust” = “Faith” which could be written as “Faith = Hope + Trust” to retain the same order as Manning.

Please note that this is primarily an intellectual excercise and is certainly not any criticism of Brennan Manning or his writing. It is easy to see that as a debate this would come down to semantics, definitions and splitting hairs.

According to Manning, faith is a defined as a noun. It is something we possess. I would like to define faith as a verb - as something that we do. Having faith is not the same as having feet. It is much more like having dessert. It is an activity that we do sometimes and other times we only wish we did it.

Definitions for the purpose of this argument:
1. Faith is believing ( having certainty) some unseen or “unknown” truth.
2. Hope is having some uncertainty, but wanting something to be true.
3. Trust is when we don’t know something is true for certain, but we take someone else’s word for it being true. If a trusted person says it’s true, then we are certain that it is true.

Regarding the statement Faith + Hope = Trust, there is an implication that hope is a required ingredient to make trust. I will argue that hope is actually an ingredient in faith, not trust. When you watch a man ride a unicycle across a high wire stretched across Niagra Falls, you HOPE that he won’t fall. But if you are sitting on his shoulders, hope just isn’t going to cut it. You need complete trust before you get up there!

Another way to look at this question is to ask, “what sparks this Leap of Faith” required of followers to truly experience the conversion of being a “True Believer”? Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in “The Cost of Discipleship” that obedience is not only a result of, but also a condition for faith. So we could say that something plus obedience = faith. Looking back at the comparison to Manning’s formula we see that in both his and the proposed formula, it is Trust that belongs on the other side of the equation, so we can write Trust + Obedience = Faith.

According to Hebrews 11:1 Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. So we know that certainty is a major element in Faith, and that was reflected earlier in the third definition. But what produces the certainty? It does not simply happen by magic. Does it come from hoping? No. From obedience? No. Does it come by faith? Maybe some of it. Trust? Hmmm. When we put our trust in Jesus, we become certain of all the hopes we have of him fulfilling his promises. Trusting God to do what is best for us turns our hope into certainty and finally into faith.

Hope + Trust = Faith