I read Mere Christianity about 10 years ago and I just started reading it again. I feel like I'm reading it for the first time because I don't remember much from the first time I read it. I was only 18 and distracted, I guess. I've grown a lot since then. And I wanted to share as best as I can what that looks like now in regards to my faith. Since going through The Story Formed Life discipleship class several times over the last 9 months I feel like my faith was challenged a lot. I was forced to look at what I believe or don't believe and to what degree do I believe it. This caused a lot of doubts in my heart in regards to my faith in God and the Bible. But I feel like God took me through that and produced an even stronger faith than I ever had. Reading C.S. Lewis' chapter on Faith help put some of those experiences into words for me. It helped me understand what was really going on.
"It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other."
"Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."
"That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off,' you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith."
Since starting to function as a body with other believers I've noticed that this also increases my faith. God knew what He was talking about I guess;)
