To me, the Bible is the greatest book ever written. It is a handbook on how to live your life. What I do is read a piece of scripture, and read it, and read it, until it talks back to me. Until the message in those words resonates within me.

Here is an example: What is the opposite of faith?

Fear.

A person cannot have both faith and fear. So, if you have faith, you cannot have fear. And, if you have fear, you do not have faith. To lose your fear, you simply need to get faith.

In fact, fear is faith in the negative. You believe that something will go wrong, and, sooner or later, it will. Faith is believing in the positive. You believe that something will go right, and sooner or later, it will.

If you read the Bible, you hear, time and time again, Jesus saying,” Do not be afraid. Have faith.” That is because Jesus knew that a person who is filled with fear has no room for faith. So, first, you make a conscious decision to eliminate fear in your life. Then, in the pit that remains, you fill it with faith.

Unfortunately, today, people have turned from faith, and if a person turns from faith, there is nothing left, but fear. To reiterate, a person either has faith or fear. There is no other option.

And so, people reek of fear. They are afraid. Afraid of losing their jobs. Afraid to take risks. Afraid to do anything that makes them extraordinary, and so, instead, they amble through life, being all-too ordinary, until they die.

If that’s you, you can stop this. Simply make the choice to kill your fears. Just as a gardener uproots weeds, fear is a weed that chokes your heart and prevents you from being who you are meant to be. Eliminate your fears, and you begin your walk to being extraordinary.

Nicely put!

There are many things that a person can place their faith in. The concept of faith is not exclusive to a mere belief that the biblical stories are the exclusive word of God.

In fact, when it comes to placing my faith in the biblical stories I honestly can't see why I would ever want to.

Here are the facts:

The biblical story of God has every single human being at odds with God and has pre-condemned them to being willful sinners who have blatantly chosen to turn away from God, or rebel against God, and are now in dire need of "repentance" to secure their "salvation" from the wrath of this God will will supposedly be condemnation in a place of everlasting punishment.

Why on Earth would I ever want to place my faith in such a story?

I don't feel that I have every turned away from any God or rebelled against God. So why should I place my faith in a story that claims that I have? That makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

To make matters worse, the Christians version of this story claims that this God had to sacrifice his very own totally innocent son to a horrible crucifixion to PAY for my willful disobedience and refusal to worship this God.

I'm supposed to see this as something I would be anxious to place my faith in?

Are you kidding me?

I would much rather have faith that these stories are the totally false made up superstitions of men.

In fact, these Christian stories even have Jesus himself claiming that only few people will actually make it into his kingdom of heaven and the vast majority of people will be cast into a state of everlasting punishment.

Why would I want to place my faith in such a thing?

Even if I thought I could have a personal shot at being one of the few people who obtains this "salvation", it would still be a horrible picture of reality for the vast majority of humans.

Again, not a picture that I would prefer to invest my faith in.

It's just not a pretty picture at all, IMHO.

Also, even if I obtained this supposedly "Salvation" and was granted entry into this "heaven" via grace, I will still have had to confess that I had at one time blatantly rebelled against this God and the only way I was 'saved' from my horrible attitude was through 'Grace'.

In other words, I'd just end up in a supposed paradise that I clearly don't even "deserve" (according to this picture), and I will probably forever be reminded that I'm only there because of "grace", and not due to my own merit.

Does that sound inviting to you?

It doesn't sound inviting to me.

So I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to place my "faith" in the biblical stories. As far as I can see if they turn out to be totally false (which I personally believe them to be), that would be the greatest thing ever.

Time to rejoice and sing Hallelujah!

It would mean that we're not in the doghouse with any God, and there's no everlasting punishment to "fear" should you not satisfy the requirements for "grace". And it would also mean that there never was any God who had to sacrifice his son to pay for our supposed desire to rebel against God and refuse to "obey" him.

So if I were going to have 'faith' with respect to the biblical picture of God, I would much prefer to have 'faith' that the whole story is nothing more than man-made superstitions.

That's where I would place my 'faith' with respect to the biblical stories of a god.

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Whilst we're on the topic of faith, I could offer several other religions and/or spiritual philosophies that are much more deserving of my faith.

The Eastern Mystical views of a spiritual reality are quite inviting, IMHO. I confess that they are also quite abstract and can be difficult to grasp intellectually for many people. But overall, the basic concepts are indeed quite positive and inviting. Also because these various philosophies are indeed quite abstract they are also free to personal interpretation. Therefore by investing your faith in mysticism anything you can imagine can be possible.

This shouldn't be a far stretch for someone who used to place their faith in the biblical concept of God, because even the bible suggests that "With God all things are possible".

Well, if we place our faith in that concept, then clearly anything you can imagine in terms of Eastern Mysticism could also be possible. So just imagine the best, and most righteous spiritual reality you possibly can and know that you cannot possibly have trumped "God's" imagination and creative possibilities.

In other words, the greatest heaven that I can possibly imagine, God* could do even BETTER. So I can never hope to imagine a better fate than could potentially be possible.

*note that the use of the term "God" here does not refer to the "biblical god" because I've already dismissed that as a mere man-made fable. So here I'm speaking about the real thing. The true spiritual consciousness of creation.

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There are also other spiritual ideas that I would rather place my faith in than the biblical stories as well. For example, the Moon Goddess and Sun God stories of northern Europe are even better than the biblical stories in terms of having a far friendlier and sane God.

The Faery lore of Northern Europe is also quite interesting and far more positive than the stories of gods from the Mediterranean region (such as the biblical God).

~~~~

So there are many different concepts of reality that a person can place their faith in.

The Christians like to keep things simple. Either the Bible is true, or you must believe in atheism!

That's their own 'faith-based' ideal.

There's is absolutely no reason why anyone would need to limit their thinking in that way.

~~~~

And finally even atheists can have 'faith' in humanity. So there are even places to place faith that aren't necessarily spiritual in nature. The concept of 'faith' isn't even restricted to spirituality.

Faith is nothing more than believing in the potentiality of something that cannot be proven.

hope this helps,
Abra

I disagree fear and faith are opposites

faith is merely BELIEF, and fear can certainly be based in what one believes

for example, If I believe that the man I have been seeing murdered someone, but I cant prove it, I may fear(be apprehensive) about remaining around him


antonyms for FEAR are
agnosticism, denial, doubt, rejection, skepticism, unbelief

one should only have faith in God and nothing else...because once you place Faith in anything other than God you at that point in time place yourself into the role of God and Faith at that point in time becomes WitchCraft

one is only suppose to have Faith not weld it

Faith and Fear are opposites. That is why when Peter fell out of the boat, Jesus said, "Do not be afraid. Oh, ye of little faith."

When we are in faith, we cannot fear.
When we are in fear, we cannot have faith.

When we are in faith, we cannot fear.
When we are in fear, we cannot have faith.


Faith is only for God...Fear is for God and his creations

funches writes:

"Faith is only for God...Fear is for God and his creations"

2 Timothy states, "God has NOT given us a spirit of fear, but of power, FAITH, and a sound mind."

I guess Timothy never heard of the term "God Fearing"

Why would Timothy hear of the term "God-fearing." I'm not sure what your source is for information, but I go by the Bible. Can you show me where the term "God-fearing" is used in the Bible.

You can't.

From a really great book:

no need to get anal ...what if I showed you Wrath...would that be close to God fearing ....

"Sinners answer God with fear of His wrath.
Believers are humbled by His Love and His Majesty."

massagetrade - great reference to Dune. Thanks.

This is the problem with the Bible, it tells us not to fear, then tells us to fear. It totally contradicts itself!

Does God want us to fear Him or doesn't He? Won't get a straight answer from the Bible that's for sure.

Ceriserose ...in case no one told you..according to your belief....everyone is a sinner

Well, some of us don't take as gospel much that proselytizing Christians write on the Internet. On the Internet, Anyone can say Anything, including holding false dichotomies held out as religious 'truth'.

One can learn a lot more about the human condition from reading Shakespeare than reading biblical-derived dogma and repeating it endlessly like that's somehow gong to make it profound wisdom.

This isn't the Dark Ages anymore, where things that go bump in the night frighten the villagers into pliable quiescence. As Edward R. Murrow once said, Americans aren't descended from fearful men.

-Kerry O.

If we accept your position on this, then clearly by your very own criteria any person who has no fear necessarily must have faith.

That's a rather interesting hypothesis.

More over, people who have fear, cannot have faith according to you, yet many Christians I've met (especially on internet forums) seem to have an extreme fear that everyone is going to hell if they don't covert to Christianity.

Oh ye of little faith!

I dont quite agree with the analogy

I could say, do not be naive, mother of children

but that would not mean that being naive is the opposite of having children


the latter is just a descrtiption of who the former refers to, not an indication of similarity or opposition

its not a contradiction truly, it is an example of how COMPLICATED ENGLISH is that when we are reading it we have to take into consideration not only CONTEXT but the many different definitions any one word can have...