I just finished reading some mind-numbngly boring crap for New Testament Theology class, so when I opened my "Christian Religious Education" text for Philosophy of Education class, I was refreshed to read some interesting, thought-provoking and relevant stuff.

The author, Thomas Groome, is talking about faith as having three dimensions: believing, trusting and doing. After talking about the need to think of faith in terms of doing, he offers this insightful analysis:
...neither is it correct to allow this performative dimension to stand alone as a total description of Christian faith. To overemphasize it to the point where the other two dimensions are excluded or made secondary is an imbalance. To begin with, purely functional Christian faith is likely to become mindless activism, and the activism may well be short-lived. As “doers of the word,” we must inform our doing by a reflected-upon and convinced belief. Secondly, faith as doing needs the grounding of a trusting relationship with God who saves in Jesus Christ. Without such a relationship and felt dependence we fall either into Pelagianism, in which we think we can save ourselves by our own efforts, or into despair when we se how far short our own efforts fall. Our responsibility to be doers of the word must never lead us to assume that w can build the Kingdom alone. And our anxiety about what remains to be done must not allow us to miss out on the signs of the Kingdom already among us. If we fail to celebrate our present, or if we measure ourselves purely on the “results” of our own efforts, then we will be reduced again to the anxiety of an unredeemed people. (Thomas Groome, Christian Religious Education, 65)
As I'm exploring more and more the realms of Christian conviction leading me towards action in the realm of social justice, I found this helpful, instuctive and challenging.