Karienta
Huge welcome to ya! and never be scared to ask for feedback, in fact, in the way you wrote it, you'll probably get lots of replys (hope so anyway)
Anyways, what is faith to me? Hmm where do I start...
I'm unashamably a Christian, though perhaps it would be more true to say, I'm unashamably a follower of Jesus Christ. Faith sometimes gets confused with religion.. people ask "what faith do you follow". I truly don't really belong to any particular part of Christianity. I have worshipped God in all sorts of places and tend to choose a church to attend where He is worshipped. So faith for me firstly is something, or more importantly someone who is the focus of my worship.
Now, what do I mean by worship? Well, everyone is accountable to someone, even if we would prefer to think we don't need to be. Inside we know when we are not doing the right thing. It's like a red light. We know what our personal and cultural morals are and when we break them, we know it in ourselves. People then go off in search of a way to forget what they know of themselves. Some turn to drugs, some to religion, some to politics, or do good things in the world. I believe this is because not only are we made physical, emotional, social and intellectual beings, we are spiritual too and there is a part of us we need to fill doing spiritual things.
So, if I do things on the outside or inside that make me know that I'm not doing things right, it leads me to ask, well who is the judge anyway. My searching led me to God and well, the spiritual part of me has been fulfilled in my relationship with Him. Believing in or having faith in God has done many things for me
1. Given me the knowledge that my sins are taken care of.. I don't ever have to worry about them again.
2. Now I know God, I don't want to do them anymore, cos I know it hurts Him.
3. I have a relationship with God that means I can talk to Him anytime I want, and He talks to me and answers the really hard questions in life like
Why am I here? Who am I? Where am I going? I can now make sense of my past, my present and my future.
Actually there is a verse in the Bible in Hebrews chapter 11 and in
verse 1, which says this ( I think it's a great definition of faith)
Faith makes us sure of what we hope for and gives us proof of what we can't see.
If you have access to a Bible (and there are online Bibles on this forum you can look at it if you don't have one), look up Hebrews chapter 11 for a long list of Bible people from the Old Testament to see what faith was to all of them.
Verse 6 says this
But without faith, we cannot please God. We must believe that God is real and that he rewards those who search for Him"
I get the impression from all of this, that first and foremost faith is something you believe in whilst not being able to make sense of it in a human sense (you can't see, smell, touch, taste, hear it), but you just KNOW in your heart that the object of your faith has all the answers you were seeking.
Hmm.. I am not going to rant.. but does this help as well?
As to your second question? I must say, I agree with most if not all of what offenbach said, except I have to take you back to the garden for a little extra insight I'm sorry
You see, it's interesting that when God was done creating all the animals (regardless of how you believe it happened.. God did create it all), He said something different about man, than He had said about the animals. When He created man He said "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God, He created them" Genesis chapter 2:27.
So firstly we unlike the animals, have the image of God stamped in our genetic makeup.
Secondly in Genesis chapter 3, this story is discussed more fully. When God has finished creating all the animals, Adam and God name them all, and then God noticed that even though all the other animals had companions, no suitable helper was there for Adam.
Every living thing had been brought by God to Adam to name, and yet of all the millions of species, nothing matched Adam as a suitable companion and so God created Eve.
Now even if you don't want to believe the creation story, it doesn't change the spiritual application, that there is something very different between man and animal.. again this is because as I said in my last answer, unlike the animals who are created with a physical, emotional, intellectual and social imprint, only man has the spiritual imprint. The animals and all of creation lead man to worship God... in Romans chapter 1 verse it says
For since the creation fo the world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so men are without excuse."
Now, I could get really "deep" and give you one other major difference, but I'm not sure you wanted a bible study at this point. I'm sorry it's the best way I can show you how the animals differ from mankind as for me it makes perfect sense. But let's talk about this first and then move onto another thought if you are happy to.
Looking forward to your next post Karienta
Carol