The Belief and Action Trap

I’ve been enjoying having CH Dodd’s commentary on Romans as my breakfast reading book and thinking about his explanation that the etymological meaning of the word ‘Shaddai’ (an ancient divine name of unknown origin) is, ‘he who suffices’, which is helpful given that the more common rendering ‘almighty’ has a become set in the concrete of cliché. He also points out that (although in the end faith = belief + trust + action) there is a deep and powerful generative moment in faith that is ‘the negation of all activity, a moment of passivity out of which strength for action comes, because in it God acts.’ We western, activist people of faith may be systematically killing or even skipping that ‘moment of passivity out of which strength for action comes’ and hence not living by faith at all and actually giving ‘faith’ a bad name.