{"id":9579,"date":"2024-12-12T04:28:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T04:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9579"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:55","slug":"questions-of-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9579","title":{"rendered":"QUESTIONS OF FAITH"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">James Fowler, in the opening chapter of his book <i>Stages of Faith<\/i>, lists a set of questions he developed for a workshop he was leading on the topic of faith:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>What are you spending and being spent for? What commands and receives your best time, your best energy?<\/li>\n\n\n<li>What causes, dreams, goals or institutions are you pouring out your life for?<\/li>\n\n\n<li>As you live your life, what power or powers do you fear or dread? What power or powers do you rely on and trust?<\/li>\n\n\n<li>To what or whom are you committed in life? In death?<\/li>\n\n\n<li>With whom or what group do you share your most sacred and private hopes for your life and for the lives of those you love?<\/li>\n\n\n<li>What <i>are<\/i> those sacred hopes, those most compelling goals and purposes in your life? (p.3)<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wow.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It seems to me that our present day understanding of &#8220;faith&#8221; has become so anemic that it looks puny in comparison to the weight of these questions.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What Fowler has in mind when speaking of &#8220;faith&#8221; is, in his words, &#8220;a much more powerful matter than claimed belief in a creed or a set of doctrinal propositions&#8221;. (p.4)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ditto for what the Bible has in mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Fowler, in the opening chapter of his book Stages of Faith, lists a set of questions he developed for a workshop he was leading on the topic of faith: Wow. It seems to me that our present day understanding of &#8220;faith&#8221; has become so anemic that it looks puny in comparison to the weight [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,176],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-fowler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9580,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9579\/revisions\/9580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}