No, not that word. The five letter F Word. Yes it is a word in the circles I often travel in that you are less likely to hear than the real F Word. As one seminary professor summarized, “Fiddle on your faith.” Yes, faith has become a near swear word among those who identify themselves as confessional. And yet, it is a little odd, because the confessions are filled with faith talk. Article Thirteen best explains why. The reformers were seeking to address the heresy that the sacraments were efficacious upon all regardless of the spiritual state of the one receiving them. The heresy asserted that the sacraments worked ex opere operato. And so to the reformer, faith talk was needed as the corrective measure to this heresy.
We live in a different age. The main heresy we face in the church today is that of elevating faith to the status of idol. We are called to decide for Jesus, believe more strongly in order to have our prayers answered, and to respect the individual’s expression of faith even at the expense of the community of saints. And so it is right that we would be hesitant to just use the word faith in certain circumstances and trust that people will understand things rightly. Hence, the source of the “fiddle on your faith” movement.
But I would argue that we have perhaps went too far with this idea. We have acted like those who tell us that bad earthly fathers mean that we must remove the word Father from the Lord’s Prayer. Just because others are speaking about faith in improper ways does not mean that we cease using the word. For to do so is to stop speaking as the scriptures and our confessions speak.
If we stop speaking about faith in the way that the scriptures and the reformers spoke about it, we only leave our people to soak up all the other faith talk that will reach their ears through other means. Perhaps the answer is not to speak of faith less, but more, but in faithful ways.
Fiddle on your faith? No. Focus on your faith? No.   Use the F Word? Yes. To do so is both biblical and confessional.
