Don’t miss the last installment of Pub theology tomorrow night at 7pm on May26th

Week of May 24, 2021

THIS WEEK: Olympics, competition, faith, and belief

1. What sport would you compete in if you were in the Olympics?
   
2. From a spiritual or moral perspective, is being highly competitive a positive thing? Discuss a competition loss that still lingers with you today.
   
3. Hebrews 12 talks about the Christian life being a race—“let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Do you look at it that way?
   
4. If you could personally witness any single event from the Bible, what would it be?
   
5. Modern approaches to religion tend to equate “faith” with “belief.” The religion scholar William Cantwell Smith notes that the Latin credo, often translated as “I believe” in Christian credal statements, is much closer to “I set my heart on” – credo being a compound from cor, cordia “heart” and do – “put, place, set.”
   
   What is the difference between intellectually believing something, and setting your heart on something? What is lost with this modern shift in equating the word ‘believe’ or ‘belief’ into a sort of mental assent?