Faith: A Journey for All by Jimmy Carter (English) Paperback Book

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In this powerful and personal New York Times bestseller, President Jimmy Carter contemplates how faith has sustained him in happiness and disappointment and considers how we may find it in our own lives. All his life, President Jimmy Carter has been a courageous exemplar of faith. Now he shares the lessons he learned. He writes, "The issue of faith arises in almost every area of human existence, so it is important to understand its multiple meanings. In this book, my primary goal is to explore the broader meaning of faith, its far-reaching effect on our lives, and its relationship to past, present, and future events in America and around the world. The religious aspects of faith are also covered, since this is how the word is most often used, and I have included a description of the ways my faith has guided and sustained me, as well as how it has challenged and driven me to seek a closer and better relationship with people and with God." Quoting eminent Protestant theologians, in Faith President Carter describes his belief in religious freedom, moral politics, and the place of prayer in his daily life. He examines faith's many meanings, he describes how to accept it, live it, how to doubt and find faith again. This is a serious and moving reflection from one of America's most admired and respected citizens.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Author Biography

Jimmy Carter was the thirty-ninth President of the United States, serving from 1977 to 1981. In 1982, he and his wife founded The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people around the world. Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He is the author of thirty books, including A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety; A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power; An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood; and Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis.

Excerpt from Book

Faith - ONE - Meanings of Faith Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. --Hebrews 11:1 Faith is not belief in spite of evidence but a life in scorn of the consequences. --Clarence Jordan Faith is the foundation of this book, and it is a rich, complex, even elusive concept. In its broadest secular meanings and also in a more specific reference to religious life, the word "faith" is profoundly important to all of us. When I completed my term in the White House and described the relationship I had tried to maintain with the people of America, I entitled my presidential memoir Keeping Faith. Fifteen years later, I wrote a book about the religious values and experiences that had shaped my life, and how the beliefs I inherited had been transformed into what I called Living Faith. It is obvious that my having kept faith with the citizens when I was in office and the faith that I have in my Creator and moral values are not the same. When I look for synonyms of the word, the short list includes (as used in Keeping Faith) "devotion," "loyalty," "commitment," "fidelity," "fealty," "dedication," and "allegiance"--and (as in Living Faith) "confidence," "trust," "reliance," "conviction," "belief," and "assurance." Since this book covers many of the same influences in my life, there is some inevitable similarity in the texts. Both keeping faith and living faith have provided the foundation for our governments and great religions. Trusted leaders of ancient times defined those principles that described their highest ideals and expressed them in words and beliefs, and people agreed to adhere to them. The combined Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with its Bill of Rights would be a notable example for the people of the United States, while for Christians it would be the Ten Commandments amplified and further explained by Jesus Christ in his Sermon on the Mount. As already described, world leaders made a concerted attempt to reach the same goal following the Second World War, with the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These were supplemented by various international agreements, such as the Geneva Conventions, designed to protect wartime prisoners from torture or extreme punishment. In 1976 the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) were ratified by enough nations to become international law. I signed both covenants while president, and the United States finally ratified the ICCPR in 1992. Our country still has not ratified the ICESCR; the American Convention on Human Rights, which I signed in May 1977; the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; or the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Ours is the only country of 193 that has not adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Since these global moves were effected, no important actions have been taken by the world community to improve the prospect of more equitable and humane relationships among people. Instead, the disparity in wealth between rich and poor has increased greatly, the portion of Americans in prison has skyrocketed and now exceeds that of any other nation, the partisan and racial divisions among our citizens have become deeper and sharper, our democratic system of elections and governing has become a tool of the wealthy, and we no longer believe that the future for our children will be better than the life that we experience. Even more recently, the threat of nuclear war has become more acute, America has abandoned its leadership as champion of a clean and healthy environment, confidence in our elected leaders has deteriorated further, and we citizens have tended to lose faith in each other. Many of our citizens have also lost faith in other "principles that never change," including truth, equality, and goodwill. These issues are of great concern to me as I enter the last stages of my life. I still have faith that the world will avoid self-destruction from nuclear war and environmental degradation, that we will remember inspirational principles, and that ways will be found to correct our other, even potentially fatal, human mistakes. My faith is the key to my optimism. It is important to understand what it means, because faith is involved in almost every aspect of our lives. The first absolute faith that most of us developed was in our mothers, as we suckled at their breasts or relished the warmth of their protective bodies. Even as a child, I soon acquired faith in my father and later in my siblings, my teachers, some other relatives, and then a few of my close friends and playmates. I evolved faith in myself, with an increasing awareness of my own limitations. Later came faith in the U.S. Navy and fellow crew members on my submarine, plus things to which I was devoted during my career: democracy, freedom, and the ideals shared by citizens of the United States; service to others, justice, equality, and the truth. A simple example of faith is when we sing in a chorus or play in an orchestra, which requires an element of faith in one another, and a reciprocal need to cooperate. It is helpful to be reminded of the dictionary definition: "Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or the observance of an obligation from loyalty, or fidelity to a concept, promise, or engagement." Faith involves each of us in a highly personal way, as an agreement or contract, a kind of devotion, confidence, loyalty, or reverence. Faith transcends what we learn from experience or from reasoning, but every human also retains the freedom to lose confidence in a thing or person and to break promises or oaths--even to violate marriage vows or to become a traitor to our country. There is a difference between reasoning and believing, but both can lead to faith. "Faith" usually means belief either in a doctrine that we accept as truth or in a truth that is self-evident. We believe in things we never see, like historic events; ideals, like freedom; or the existence of germs and atoms. Sometimes we don''t believe things we observe ourselves, like the apparent small size of stars and other heavenly bodies. There is much illusion and much expansion of our thoughts in the activity of believing or having faith. We like to understand what it is that we believe, and how and why we believe it. Immanuel Kant says that we have faith in something (a) because we have always believed it; (b) on authority that we respect; (c) by self-evidence; (d) through persuasion; (e) through reasoning; or (f) because it could encompass what our community accepts as real or true without discussion or dissension. It is obvious that "faith" has many meanings, but it is most commonly considered to be religious in nature, and the best definition and examples of Christian faith are found in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews: Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. . . . By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God''s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Because the Hebrew Bible does not focus on faith as belief, and assumes that all who read the Bible believe in God, the word "faith" is used only twice in the King James Version of the Old Testament and 245 times in the New Testament. The writer of Hebrews relates faith directly and by name to a number of biblical heroes of Old Testament times whose actions were determined by it. By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. . . . By faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. . . . By faith Abraham, when tested by God, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son. . . . By faith Moses'' parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king''s edict. . . . By faith [Moses] left Egypt, not fearing the king''s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the application of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. . . . I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; . . . whose weakness was turned to strength. . . . These were all commended for their faith. The Bible goes on to say that "faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17); "A person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified" (Galatians 2:16); "But my righteous one will live by faith" (Hebrews 10:38); "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rath

Details ISBN1501184431 Author Jimmy Carter Pages 192 Publisher Simon & Schuster Language English Year 2019 ISBN-10 1501184431 ISBN-13 9781501184437 Format Paperback Publication Date 2019-04-02 DEWEY 234/.23 Imprint Simon & Schuster Subtitle A Journey for All Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2019-04-02 NZ Release Date 2019-04-02 US Release Date 2019-04-02 UK Release Date 2019-04-02 Audience General We've got this

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