The money and banking system in the U.S. requires us to have an enormous trust/faith in the system.

Your bank account balance is a number, not the amount of bills stacked somewhere in a vault.

And even more, it takes faith to believe that paper, and different versions of paper, are worth more or less. For example, it takes faith to believe the $5 bill is worth more than the $1 bill.

As Americans, we have no problem taking that enormous leap of faith.

We base a huge part of our lives working to earn “money”….and then we faithfully receive monetary value as compensation for our effort. In other words, we’re basing much of our effort and life on a faith in the monetary system.

For some reason, we have no issue making that enormous leap of faith.

But when it comes to putting faith in things we can actually touch and see (creation, our bodies, etc.) we have a hard time putting “faith” in the idea of a creator.

In Tim Keller’s book “Making Sense of God”, he makes the point that every belief stance, whether someone believes in God or not, requires both faith AND reason. Things can’t be empirically proven…and even the definition of “proof” is not agreed upon. Keller’s overall point is that the stance of the Christian and the atheist both require reason AND a leap of faith (because things can’t be empirically proven). The final section of Keller’s book argues that belief in God requires the smallest leap of faith compared to other main beliefs.

Again, we have no issue putting enormous faith into a system we’ve made up in our heads (money and banking) but we struggle to put a small amount of faith in things we can touch and experience.

Even more, let’s say you do believe in a creator, does your faith waver when something happens and you don’t understand why God would allow it to happen?

Why is our faith so fragile when it comes to God but so strong when it comes to money and banking?

My point is obvious…

On a day to day basis, we experience the evidence of God to a much greater degree than we experience the evidence of a monetary value system….but for some reason we have a much easier time putting our unwavering faith in the latter.

Think about this the next time you pay for your meal at a restaurant. You have faith that the value of your $10 bill is enough to cover the amount you owe. The restaurant has faith in the value of the paper you’re handing over to cover your meal. Much faith is required and exchanged without us thinking about it.

Our monetary exchanges often occur without any doubt. We have incredible faith in a system so ingrained in us that we don’t even realize we’re exercising faith. May we put even more unwavering faith in God while we walk through the day to day experiences of life. Imagine what our lives would look like with a money-like, unwavering faith…..Jesus tells us…..

“I solemnly tell you,” said Jesus, “that if you have an unwavering faith, you shall not only perform such a miracle as this of the fig-tree, but that even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be thou lifted up and hurled into the sea,’ it shall be done.” – Matthew 21:21