The Faith: What Christians Believe, Why They Believe It, and Why It Matters
Written by Charles W. Colson and Harold Fickett III
Narrated by Charles W. Colson
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Rightly understood and rightly communicated, the Christian faith is one of great joy. It is an invitation to God's kingdom, where tears are replaced by laughter and longing hearts find their purpose and their home.
This is the heart of the gospel: God's search to reclaim us and love us as his own. But have we truly grasped this? Those of us who have disdained Christianity as a religion of bigotry--have we repudiated the genuine article or merely demonstrated our own prejudice and ignorance? Those of us who are Christians--have we deeply apprehended the mission of Jesus, and do our ways and character faithfully reflect his beauty? From the nature of God, to the human condition, to the work of Jesus, to God's coming kingdom, and all that lies between, how well do we understand the foundational truths of Christianity and their implications?
The Faith is a book for our troubled times and for decades to come, for Christians and non-Christians alike. It is the most important book Chuck Colson and Harold Fickett have ever written: a thought-provoking, soul-searching, and powerful manifesto of the great, historical central truths of Christianity that have sustained believers through the centuries. Brought to immediacy with vivid, true stories, here is what Christianity is really about and why it is a religion of hope, redemption, and beauty.
Charles W. Colson
Chuck Colson was a popular and widely known author, speaker, and radio commentator. A former presidential aide to Richard Nixon and founder of the international ministry Prison Fellowship, he wrote several books that have shaped Christian thinking on a variety of subjects, including Born Again, Loving God, How Now Shall We Live?, The Good Life, and The Faith. His radio broadcast, BreakPoint, at one point aired to two million listeners. Chuck Colson donated all of his royalties, awards, and speaking fees to Prison Fellowship Ministries.
More audiobooks from Charles W. Colson
God and Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries between Faith and Politics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Loving God: The Cost of Being a Christian Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dancing with Max: A Mother and Son Who Broke Free Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Final Word: Holding Tight to the Issues that Matter Most Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to The Faith
Related audiobooks
William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Being the Body: A New Call for the Church to Be Light in the Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Good Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sky Is Not Falling: Living Fearlessly in These Turbulent Times Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Zero Hour America: History's Ultimatum over Freedom and the Answer We Must Give Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/550 People Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Spiritual Giants of the Faith Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fight: A Practical Handbook For Christian Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanishing Grace: Audio Bible Studies: Whatever Happened to the Good News? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary: How to Reach Friends and Family Who Avoid God and the Church Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Clinging to Hope: What Scripture Says about Weathering Times of Trouble, Chaos, and Calamity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Believe Audio Bible Voice Only - New International Version, NIV: Living the Story of the Bible to Become LIke Jesus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFresh Faith: What Happens When Real Faith Ignites God's People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Choosing Your Faith: In a World of Spiritual Options Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grace from the Cross Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How Great Is Our God: Classic Writings from History's Greatest Christian Thinkers in Contemporary Language Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Were Made for More: The Life You Have, the Life God Wants You to Have Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grace Effect: What Happens When Our Brokenness Collides with God's Grace Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mystery of God's Will Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mere Apologetics: How To Help Seekers And Skeptics Find Faith Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unimaginable: What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lamb and the Führer: Jesus Talks With Hitler Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hope of Nations: Standing Strong in a Post-Truth, Post-Christian World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Being Born Again Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Intentional Faith: Aligning Your Life with the Heart of God Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Who Is This Man?: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5So, You Want To Be Like Christ?: Eight Essentials to Get You There Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ambition: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Christianity For You
Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Winning the War in Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Holy Bible in Audio - King James Version: The Complete Old & New Testament Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Return of the Gods Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Uninvited: Living Loved When You Feel Less Than, Left Out, and Lonely Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Boundaries: When To Say Yes, How to Say No Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little Book of Letting Go Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Boundaries Updated and Expanded Edition: When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: Third Edition with Bonus Content, New Reflections Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mere Christianity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 5 Love Languages Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Four Loves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Crazy Love, Revised and Updated: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Great Divorce Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Boundaries in Marriage: Understanding the Choices That Make or Break Loving Relationships Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Faith
33 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Seventh in the Samson series with Bernard coping - just - with office politics and difficult personal relationships while still turning up as Man of Action. Just as well that he still has reliable Werner to talk to.My only grouse is Deighton's assertion that each book is a stand-alone work. You really do need to know what is going on before you start and I doubt that many readers wouldn't want to know what happens next.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The last chapter, The Great Proposal sums up a lot and challenges the current tendency of Christians to keep their beliefs to themselves. Christianity has contributed to democracy and law, and capitalism. Also art, science and education. Christianity started the first universities and pushed for public education. The author offers this as argument to Christopher Hitchens claim that Christianity has only contributed negatively to history. Christians nursed the plague victims in Ancient Rome and Catholic charities has led in caring for AID victims. The book concludes with the killing of Theo Van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri. Because we cover up our Christian foundations the east sees the west as purely secular and intolerable. They see the west eliminating moral behavior, denying truth and comic pornographers like Van Gogh as representative of the best we have to offer. Reason without faith leads to chaos; in Islam faith alone leads to tyranny. The tragedy is that the two sides can never find common ground. Pope Benedict said, "a reason which is deaf to the Devine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures," Christianity does not seek to impose, it proposes. I find reviewing works of nonfiction to be extremely difficult because every chapter is a piece of the whole. I enjoyed this book. I liked that Colson worked so hard on unity among Christians. I think those that choose to not believe in God, like Dawkins, would not be swayed by this book. Those that might like to find ways to explain their belief might find this book of value. The book really is a challenge to the Christian to be more intentional.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5For anyone who hasn’t heard of the late Charles Colson, he was known as Richard Nixon’s “hatchet man,” convicted during the Watergate scandal. He pleaded guilty and served seven months in prison. Just before serving, he converted to Christianity and underwent a radical life conversion. He founded a prison ministry and authored perhaps two dozen books about Christianity.In this book, Colson promises to explain what Christians believe, why, and why it matters. He succeeds in two out of three goals, describing conservative beliefs and how the beliefs transform lives. He doesn’t, however, explain very well why conservatives believe.The book is in two parts, and the first part is painful, so bear with me until I get through this section. Hoping to explain why Christians believe the way he does, Colson instead highlights how differently many Christians really do believe. For example, a poll showed that “49 percent of Protestant pastors reject core biblical beliefs,” whatever that means. Colson is unfazed; he chops them out of the church, so they don’t count. One of his favorite phrases is “true Christians,” by which he means anyone who agrees with his “nonnegotiable, irreducible fundamentals of the Christian faith.”Colson argues with emotional appeal. For instance, he writes about struggling with his children’s illnesses, questioning God’s love, and then stepping outside the hospital to see the beauty of creation. God Is, he immediately concludes, and the book transitions into a discussion of three possibilities: A godless universe; a pantheistic universe; and a personal God. But why does he neglect to consider the most obvious fit to his observation: Deism. Doesn’t his observation imply a creative creator who then ignores his creation?Colson’s logic in this book seems to be that since the Bible is true, everything in it is true. The Bible is our rock, the ultimate authority, and because it came from God, it must certainly be true. And how do we know the Bible is literally true? Because “there has been no discovery proving the Bible false.” Sigh. Maybe the most obvious “fail” here is that archaeology has thoroughly debunked many of the claims of conquest in the book of Joshua. Elsewhere, Colson argues that Jesus’ resurrection must be true, because nobody has yet disproved it. I guess Elvis fans can take heart: Nobody has yet proved he’s dead, either.Colson especially goes on the offensive against liberal Christianity, labeling it “institutionalized agnosticism,” “no better than paganism,” and insinuating that liberal Christians were responsible for Hitler’s eugenics movement. I can handle the anti-liberal posturing by people who misunderstand the nature of Christ. I’m quite used to that. But the first half of Colson’s book is little more than fundamentalist rhetoric.After whittling the Christian community down to his own mold, he is ready to move on to part 2. But not before dissin’ even my man Einstein, claiming that Einstein detested the “religion of fear and morality” that a personal God brings (Einstein actually said something quite different … that development from a religion of fear TO moral religion was a great step forward, and he pointed to the Bible as evidence of that progression).Anyway. On to part 2 where the intolerance continues but where it now mixes with some very inspiring words about how Christians are to live out their faith. This is where “why it matters” rings true, and this section raised my rating from one star to three. God’s favorites, Colson notes from scripture, are the poor, the destitute, the widowed, the fatherless, the sick, the prisoners, and anyone suffering injustice. So we choose sides. We choose love, and plunge into the battle between good and evil. Once on God’s side, we come to understand God’s point of view and position ourselves to experience God’s love and friendship in a whole new way.This time, Colson is correct. He has identified the “true Christians.”
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Colson and Fickett present a simple, readible, extraordinarily well written summary of the essential elements of the Christian faith. In the footsteps of "Mere Christianity," "The Faith" avoids the mine fields that divide Christians without compromising those elements that tie the faith to its historical roots and unite us all. This book is a must read for all thoughtful Christians.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent book! Very inspirational and motivating! It wasn't technical and very easy to read.