1 Timothy 6:12
12. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

Faith is different than The Faith. Fight the good fight of the faith. What the heck. I have faith that God loves me. Simple. I have faith that Christ is who he says he is and his words are true. I have faith that there is an eternity and that what we do here in this life has eternal consequences – can be perfectly great or perfectly horrible – it’s our choice. I’ve neither seen nor heard anything to dissuade me from believing that. I have seen and heard plenty to convince me that it’s true.

Most of what I hear in the negative runs like this: “No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.” Elie Wiesel.

This is a collective statement saying that, at the end of the day, there is no right or wrong, that all collective judgments are wrong. Then it ends with a collective judgement. So it must be wrong? It doesn’t make sense to me. It seems to me that most arguments against there being a right and wrong go like this one does.

“Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called…” Called by a God who loves us, who died for our sake so that we can have the perfectly great, awesome, loved, don’t know how to describe what it’s going to be like eternity.

Or don’t and take hold of an eternity that is completely absent of that. It’s a big choice that’s worth looking hard at.

I have faith that “The Faith” is what it claims to be. In that faith, I find what I need to get through the times when I don’t quite get why such and so happens. I have faith that “The Faith” is true, and because it is, anything that’s in disagreement with that can’t be true.

I confess, in front of the handful of people who will read this, and anyone else who I see, that I believe that Christ is God, that he died for us so our sins are forgiven and that we’ll spend eternity in the presence of the perfect God. I believe that I’m called to live the life Christ calls us to live in return for that blessing – that’s my end of the bargain.

In this life, I’ll take the ups and downs, the hits and the joys, the pain and the comfort, the loss and the gain, with faith in The Faith.