the blind leap?

PERSONAL RELIGION PUBLIC REALITY HB - DALLAS WILLARDWe can never understand the life of faith seen in Scripture and in serious Christian living unless
we drop the idea of faith as a ‘blind leap’ and understand that faith is commitment to action,
often beyond our natural abilities, based upon knowledge of God and God’s ways.  The romantic talk of ‘leaping’, to which we in the Western world have become accustomed, actually amounts to ‘leaping’ without faith – that is, with no genuine belief at all.  And that is actually what people have in mind today when they speak of a ‘leap of faith’.

– Dallas Willard, Personal Religion, Private Reality

Can true faith ever be ‘blind’?  However limited our knowledge is, do we not base our belief on something?  Do we trust because we have a button we press that inspires trust?  Or do we trust because we know something about the person in whom we put that trust? 

Yes, we can have mistaken faith, based on error, misunderstanding or lies – but when these are exposed faith understandably shatters and no longer exists – because the base is taken away.  It sees through them.

If faith is described as seeing what is unseen how can it be blind?
Surely faith’s hallmark is sight, not the lack of it?

Have we tried to stretch the vocabulary of faith to fit something else entirely?

2 thoughts on “the blind leap?

  1. Nancy Wallace says:

    Interesting post. I think faith in God needs reasons. In that sense, faith is reasonable. But faith does not depend on absulute proof. Faith is not certainty. If we had certainty we would not need faith. Faith involves acting on what we believe i.e. responding in to the One in whom we believe. This does mean taking a risk. I liken it to deciding to marry someone. First it's wise to get to know the person, but marrying them involves the risk of commitment (leap of faith if you like)not knowing what the 'for better or for worse' etc. might turn out to be. Rather like Abraham leaving Ur without knowing where his faith in God would take him.


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