Criminal Minds, Believer: "A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

Then as she looked up in his face, he smiled most sweetly and said something he had never said before, "You have one real beauty, Much-Afraid, you have such trustful eyes. Trust is one of the much beautiful things in the world. When I look at the trust in your eyes I find you more beautiful to look upon than many a lovely queen.

Maximus knows and expressly states that "faith is true knowledge based on unprovable principles, because it is the testimony to things that lie beyond both theoretical and practical reason."

This is true of all of us. It is a huge change, from unbelief to knowing God's presence, from perception of only what we can see, hear, and feel to a new realm, the spiritual world. We enter into this like infants.

But now having seen him which is invisible I fear not what man can do unto me.

The familiar can feel good - especially with so much uncertainty when we turn on the news. But it doesn't uplift us, challenge us, or inspire anew as truly original work can.

Let us fear the worst, but work with faith; the best will always take care of itself.

And that's the great thing about living the Christian life and trying to live by faith, is you're trying to get better every day. You're trying to improve.

Imagination is not the ability to dream up things that aren't real; it is the ability to see what is real but often unseen. As Eugene Peterson says in Subversive Spirituality, for a Christian whose hope is in an invisible God, seeing the unseen is essential. 24 Hebrews 11 calls this faith.

I do not think that people have religion because they relax their usually strict criteria for evidence and accept extraordinary claims; I think they are led to relax these criteria because some extraordinary claims have become quite plausible to them.

five words from a church hymn: One step enough for me. Lead, kindly Light … Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough

The intellect is good. Our natural abilities of perception are good, and they are not opposed to faith. Please hear me: our natural abilities are not opposed to faith. Yes, we live by faith and not by sight, but try not using your sight at all and see how that works. When Jesus walked this earth, he used all of his human powers—all of them—and we are called to devote all of our human powers to God in order that we might live under him as he intended.