Showing posts with label character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label character. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Fabric of Faithfulness



In thinking about starting this blog, and considering a name for it, I’ve been grappling with a book about young adults, and the challenges they face in becoming faithful followers of Christ. Several years ago in our church library, I came across Steven Garber’s The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving together Belief and Behavior. I kept it so long the librarians tracked me down looking for it, and I finally bought my own copy.

Garber recounts conversations with many young adults, exploring the questions “What do you care about, and why?” and pushing to discover: “What is it that happens when a person , moving from student years into adulthood, continues to construct a coherent life? How does a worldview become a way of life? How do students learn to connect presuppostions with practice – belief about the world with life in the world?”

Garber has much to say about the process of faith formation during the post-high school, young adult years, the purposes of education, the integration of faith and learning. As he talks with adults who have moved on to mature faith, those who “with substantial integrity have connected belief to behavior, personally as well as publicly,” he identifies three essentials, or what he calls three “strands” that must be woven together: