Faith is belief in moderation, the opposite of extremes, the antithesis of the "one-ended stick".
It is obvious that faith can't exist without belief. Whenever Jesus encountered someone who struggled with belief, He would commonly ask, "Where is your faith"?
But notice that He also never asked, "Where is your certainty?"
Just as faith is impossible without belief, it is equally impossible without the presence of doubt.
If you are absolutely 100% certain of any belief, it can NOT be defined as faith. No one has FAITH that they are going to die. No one has faith that the sun will come up tomorrow (although it IS possible, but extremely unlikely that it will NOT come up).
If faith is a belief that is the mean between doubt and certainty, than it appears to in the middle between two extremes.
So why is it that people of faith so often find themselves at the fringes of life?
If you do NOT have faith, then what are you left with except to believe only in that which can be proven with certainty (which is very little) or with a perpetual skepticism that leaves your mind unhinged.
"Let beliefs fade fast and frequently, if you wish institutions to remain the same. The more the life of the mind is unhinged, the more the machinery of matter will be left to itself." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, pg 60.
Such thinking changes nothing, not even its adherent.
I once heard a local pastor say it this way: "If your faith hasn't changed you, then you need to change your faith."
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