We didn’t kill God. We merely closed our eyes to Him

Only minutes after being called “radical and autistic” after hanging Diego Velázquez’s Christ Crucified on the wall, she was crying. Crying because faith wasn’t given to her like a lightning-strike bolting from the skies into the soul. Which made me wonder. Is faith given or found?

She based her conviction on an idea similar to that in Ephesians 2:8,

“For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God”

It is possible to interpret this gift as a birthday gift. If somebody does not give it to you, you cannot get it. However, a gift of God is freely given. Not getting it lies with the taker.

Saint Augustine wrote,

“Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.”

Faith is a choice. A gift that you can choose to accept. You must decide to believe.

However, she - my friend - thought this was manifesting. It is. But her definition of it was to fool oneself into doing or believing something. This seems false to me. Manifesting is the use of faith to uncover something that was already there in potential. Faith is the vehicle to realize the potential.

In other words, we haven’t killed God. We merely closed our eyes to Him.

The divine flame lies dormant in our souls. It’s not extinguished. But modernity has carried us so far in the direction of sin that we are numb to the heat of this flame. All of us are free to be warmed by the flame once more. To choose faith and see where it leads.