President
Jimmy Carter is well known for his Christian faith. Excepting a handful of famous pastors, Carter is one of the few Americans who is known as a Christian almost as
much as he is known for other things; this is especially extraordinary for a
former president.
Faith is the title and subject of his
recent book. He addresses religious faith, but other types of faith are
important to him as well.
For instance, each
person need faith in himself to take action with hope to achieve positive
results. We need faith in each other to live, work and trade together peaceably.
We even need some degree
of faith in government. If we hope to achieve the ultimate
purposes of government, justice, equality under the law and peace, we have to believe it can be done.
Especially in a republic we need to believe we can achieve these goals through
our institutions, laws and the people we elect to represent us.
“A country will have authority and influence because of moral factors, not its military strength; because it can be humble and not blatant and arrogant, because our peple and our country want to serve others and not dominate others. And a nation without morality will soon lose its influence around the world.”-Jimmy Carter, Faith (quoting a speech he presented in 1978)
There are also personal goals that require faith. Justice and
equality may be the highest goals we can expect from government, but we want
more. If we also hope for love, humility, generosity and kindness, we need another kind of faith.
For many, including
Carter, this is religious faith. We find in religion reasons to believe that
things like love are real and worthy of pursuing, even if we don’t always get
it right.
For Christians, this
faith is founded on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the proof of God’s loving mercy and grace. It all starts with God,
and we can hope to be better people through the empowerment of God and our
grateful response to His love demonstrated in Jesus Christ. As Carter puts it,
“It is not what we do for God that is important but what God does for us. Faith
brings about good works, but doing good things does not result in faith."
For Carter, Jesus is
worthy of consideration as an example of the ideal in human character. Being
like Christ is being a better human being. As a Christian and Protestant, Carter believes he has a personal
relationship with an ever-present Christ. The faith that underlies Carter’s
career and achievements as a politician, philanthropist and peacemaker is that he does not walk
alone, but he walks with a living Christ and with other believers who seek to
follow Him and see His good will done in our time.
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