Blog #3 GL 350

            Does history limit faith? Saint Paul had said, “Think of God’s mercy, my brothers, and worship him…by offering your living bodies as a holy sacrifice…Do not model yourselves selves on the behavior of the world around you.” This quote to me says that looking not only at the world around you but also the world of the people before you will limit your faith. I think that if you look at history it limits faith but I think the history creates a bigger like effect on people when they enter large churches. I think that if you are in any building not necessarily a church but any building that is just huge in size, and has a vast amount of history that occurred in that place you get this sort of shock and aw feeling. You just can’t help but to sit there and wonder about all the amazing events and the people that have been in this same very structure that you have. I think these feeling can be confused with the feelings of faith that you can get when you are in churches and in church ceremonies. You are sitting there in this huge church draped in gold and covered in beautiful art you are really just in shock in aw about the location you are in and the history around it but not specifically your faith.

            I think that history limits faith because many people get caught up with trying to receive facts of their faith through their religions book. , when this was never the intent of these books. All the stories were meant to have a meaning and a moral not to be historically accurate. The historic meaning in these books have little value you are supposed to take in the lessons and the morals of each story and learn from them at which then you can strengthen your faith. You can only have too much faith looking at facts before you start to question what you believe because from a historic point some of the things might not make sense. Once you start questioning these small facts you begin to limit your faith immediately.  

            Another point is again location, if you have truth faith I do not believe where you are and the history behind it would have any effect on the strength of your faith. For example being in your small home town church or maybe a huge church in New York or even a huge church in Rome. I personally my faith had felt the same. Either way you are in a church of Christ the fact of who had previously been in that church or how long that church may have been there does not affect how strong my faith may or may not be. Think about in ancient times there were no buildings dedicated to religion, no churches. Church was any building which a group gathered in the name God. I don’t think any building they were in made their faith stronger or weaker.

You can never really expand your mind and faith either if you are stuck in in the historic view. People make breakthroughs in faith and religion all of the time but if you are stubborn and are not accepting change because of the old views of your tradition you in a way will never truly expand your faith just stuck in the limits on which the history you build your faith on has set for you. As Saint Peter had said, “you are slaves of no one except God, so behave like free men, and ever use your freedom as an excuse for wickedness.” You may wonder what this has to do with anything; I believe this can also be used for faith. If you stuck on the traditions of history your faith is limited there for you faith is chained, slave to the history of man in the religion that you follow.