Faith and Error
Greetngs, brothers and sisters. This is Dr. James Perry continuing with our series where we seek to
explore the deeper meanings of our relationship with Jesus Christ. Over the years, the heavenly
Father has revealed many revelations of spiritual truth to me, and I want to share them with you. This
morning we seek to understand the association of faith and error.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
Faith and Error
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Hebrew,
Chapter 11, Verse 1.
Brothers and sisters, today we consider faith and error. We gain insight as to why error is oftentimes
associated with faith, and what if anything can be done to reduce the error if not eliminate it
altogether. We shall examine the role of the Spirit of Truth in eliminating error from our faith, as
well as the problem of incompleteness and how this makes us prone to error.
We know faith is a spiritual quality, and this quality is given to us by the heavenly Father, who is
spiritual. It would seem then that because the nature of faith is spiritual, this truth should in some
way protect us from the problem of material error. This problem is further complicated by the fact
that faith is nondirectional; that is, it can be applied to any sort of reality, moral, intellectual, material
or spiritual. And being material creatures who have faith in God, it is only natural that we should turn
to him for help in the solution or the correction of our problems that we are unable to resolve on our
own. But experience has shown us that we cannot look to the heavenly Father for direct help in the
solution of our material and intellectual problems. Experience seems to suggest and indeed verify
that there are separate laws governing these problems of the intellectual and the material. (There are,
however, spiritual qualities that we can use in the solution of our difficult material and intellectual
problems, as we shall see.)
First and foremost, there is the faith-associated error of healing. So many of us suffer from physical
afflictions, some of them brought on by our individual choices of wrong living during our youth; and
some are caused by our environment that we have polluted. Some problems are associated with
genetic mistakes, or accidents associated with our living. Medical science has not progressed to the
point where our knowledge enables us to correct a lot of these problems; sentimentality perpetuates
quite a few of them, such as ignoring known genetic problems in our desire to have children. But in
any case these are distressing problems and readily cause us to want to do anything to get well,
including asking God to cure us. But how did this error become associated with our faith?
Mankind has long sought relief from his medical difficulties, using whatever happened to be
associated with the illness from signs and portents, to portions, magical incantations, to finally
embarking on the scientific journey for the cure of material diseases. His science even tries to cure
moral and spiritual disease. During the bestowal of Jesus on earth, being a Son of God, he performed
many seeming miracles to the people who lived during that period, but we know that he did not
violate any laws governing material reality to effect healing. He did make use of laws that were
known to him but unknown to us. During that era and even now, we have no conceptual ability to
understand these things, and so we have come to believe that faith in Jesus produced so-called
material miracles, but of course strict observation over time proves this not to be the case. And this
sort of error has been perpetuated through today. I would not say that absolutely no healing or
interventions ever take place in the life of mortals, but that if they do they are in response to the
Father's will and not in response to the desire or the faith of the individual.
Other faith-associated errors, such as financial miracles, legal miracles and other prosperity miracles,
relationship miracles, employment miracles, war miracles-claiming that God is on our side in war
and in other material miracles desired, all have derived from the same misunderstanding. But though
this faith is error associated, it never fails to enlarge the spiritual capacity of the individual
notwithstanding. The true message which is the proper domain of spiritual faith has essentially been
lost or watered down in the lives of the individual believer. We refuse to render to Caesar the things
of Caesar, and to render to God the things of God.
The desire to be like God in character, to be perfect even as the Heavenly Father is perfect, is a
genuine spiritual reward that is ours for the asking. We are actually asking of God only that we do
His will. Embracing God's will does not directly solve our material problems; instead, it unshackles
the natural power of our minds to make discoveries and coordinate them. God works to improve the
lives of his children, but He works through the laws governing our problems. And as we come to
understand and abide by these laws, we will get more of what we want and less of what we do not
want. Quite a few of these laws we understand already but we refuse to obey them. This results in
pain, suffering and disappointment. We should never hesitate to ask God for wisdom, moral stamina
and spiritual power as we resolutely attack our material problems using the laws governing them.
And when we begin to earnestly do this, we will see these material problems decrease as the goal
and purpose of living becomes the finding of the Heavenly Father through the technique of doing
His will.
This concludes today's message on faith and error. We hope you find something in this message to
ponder and pray about as you go about your day. Until next time, this is Dr. James Perry.
Inspirational Messages
By Dr. James Perry
Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done!
Faith and Error
