Faith

Today's Reading

Read Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

Then read Romans 4:20-21: "No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised."

Reflection

Lewis addresses faith in two senses. The first, and simpler, is faith as the act of holding on to what your reason has accepted, even when your moods try to pull you away.

"Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."

This is enormously practical. Lewis is not describing blind belief or a leap in the dark. He is describing something every mature person does in other areas of life. A person learning to swim knows, rationally, that water will support them. But the moment their feet leave the bottom, panic screams that they will drown. Faith, in this sense, is the discipline of trusting what you know to be true rather than obeying the panic.

The same principle applies to the Christian life. You may have excellent reasons for believing in God — philosophical, historical, experiential. But there will be mornings when you wake up and the whole thing feels like a fairy tale. Lewis says: that is not a discovery. It is a mood. And moods are not reliable guides to truth.

The second sense of faith is deeper: the discovery that you cannot keep the moral law on your own, that all your best efforts end in failure, and that you must therefore throw yourself entirely on the mercy of God. This is faith not just as intellectual holding-on but as existential surrender — the moment when you stop trying to earn God's approval and simply trust that He gives it freely in Christ.

Hebrews 11:1 captures both dimensions: faith is "assurance" (the settled conviction that does not waver with moods) and "conviction of things not seen" (trust in a reality beyond what your senses can verify).

Abraham, in Romans 4, exemplifies this faith. He had no empirical evidence that he would father a nation. But he trusted God's promise, "fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised."

Going Deeper

Lewis's treatment of faith is a corrective to two errors. The first treats faith as an irrational leap, ignoring evidence. The second treats faith as something you produce through willpower, like pumping yourself up emotionally. Lewis says faith is neither irrational nor emotional. It is a decision to trust what you have good reason to believe, especially when feelings and circumstances suggest otherwise.

This concludes Week 3. You have walked through the moral landscape of the Christian life — from the cardinal virtues to the theological, from social justice to the depths of pride and the heights of faith.