I am not positive, but I think a quote from Father Tome goes as follows:

… the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.

This quote came to mind during a Bible study this week going over Luke 12:49-59.  Particularly, the verses where Jesus said that He came not to bring peace, but division.  Jesus’ intention for saying such words are probably a statement of fact:  There are going to be families (and friends) divided on the basis of faith and rejection of the Gospel.

But this led into two different tangents:

The first was the fact that, without Jesus, we are all under the federal headship of Adam, that is, we are all united in rebellion against our God.  We are united in sin and death, pain and suffering.  A diagram often used to share the Gospel is a bridge diagram, showing two land masses separated by a deep chasm.  Man is on one side and God is on the other, and sin is what separates them and breaks the relationship.  Jesus is the bridge that lets man get from one side to the other.  But perhaps there is only one land mass:  Where God is.  So where does man fit into this diagram?  He is in the chasm, groundless in sin.  Maybe Jesus would be a ladder or something… the analogy breaks down.  However, when Jesus came, He brought both peace and division.  He made a way for man to be reconciled to God (peace), yet that means that a man with faith will be separated from the rest of the world (division).

The second talked about division in one’s own heart.  It is basically a smaller and personal scale of the first example, in that without Jesus our hearts are united in sin:  There is only one motive and our hearts have only one master.  However, when Jesus enters our hearts, He grants us the ability to serve a different master.  We are given the choice to serve either sin or God, and this choice is both an event (or crisis) and a process.  When we first make the choice of conversion (event) and throughout our everyday lives and small decisions (process).  One does not happen without the other.  This beautiful division is what I think we need to seek.

I prayed so often in Mexico for my heart to be undivided; that I only wanted to have the desire to serve the people of Mexico.   I ultimately came upon the realization that I wanted to desire to serve only God.  However, now I realize that this is impossible on Earth.  We are always going to have two different motives acting upon every movement; every decision.  So if we feel undivided, I think it is a scary feeling.  Because, most likely, we are unidivided for ourselves.

So, if anything, we should be asking God to bring more division to our hearts.

And this ties back into the quote by Father Tome.  If we are certain and if there are no doubts, we cannot call what we believe in ‘faith.’  In the same way that faith only exists in the presense of doubt and courage only exists in the face of fear, then good choices and discernment of those choices are only manifest inside a divided heart.

<IXOYE><