I want to say from the beginning that I am not trying to go into the entomology of these two words. I am rather going to talk about the difference in concepts when people typically refer to belief and faith. It’s been my experience that belief is a lot less costly than faith.

People say they believe in things very casually. Some say they believe in reincarnation. Others might say that they don’t believe in God. There are those who would say they believe in Jesus. When people talk about believing in something, it is quite often the case that they are not staking much on that belief. If whatever it was turned out to not be true, it wouldn’t be all that devastating.

Faith, on the other hand, is a different story. I like to think about it in terms of rock climbing because it helps to illustrate the point. It’s one thing to look at a knot and say that the knot is strong. It’s quite another thing when that knot is the only reason you’re not plummeting to the ground. That’s what faith is about. When you put your faith in something, that something is holding all of your weight.

This really challenges me because belief is easy but faith is costly. There are a lot of things that I would tell you I believe in but I don’t always have faith in. My goal is to gradually move the things that are only in the belief category into the faith category. What’s in your belief category that needs to move over? What are you going to do to help make that transition?