Faith is golden. Beliefs are overrated, as are works.When one reduces religion to either beliefs or good works, both are overrated. Reductionism (think "nothing but") usually destroys anything it attempts to explain, as in: religion is nothing but belief or religion is nothing but morality.
Morality itself has for many been reduced to nothing but sexual morality. It is so much more, embracing personal, business and community relationships. And faith is so much more than belief, as in "I set my heart on" God rather than purely intellectual acts of belief.
Belief and good works are overrated especially when we think of them as prerequisites to being befriended by God.
Some 50 years ago, I sat in a university classroom in Rome when a professor introduced his course on the theology of revelation –– what we know about God because God told us –– with this image.
In a large lecture hall with several hundred students from perhaps 50 countries, he paced, slowly, on a raised platform.
He pressed one white dot with chalk on an enormous blackboard. After a dramatic pause, he said, in French-accented Latin, "The white is what we know about God. The black is what we don't. What we know is little. But the little God has given us to know is precious."
Among that precious little are two biblical themes: Be not afraid and you are loved.
More here-
http://www.mcall.com/features/religion/mc-faith-values-lewellis-0526-20120526,0,2153356.story
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