And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness. (Gen 15,6)

I wrote that faith is a struggle for the image of God in the heart of man.

Faith is a struggle because believing stands against what I don't believe in or do not want to believe. Just as Abram believed God against an obvious reality: he could no longer have a son. Unbelief is more natural to humans; we don't have to make great efforts to disbelieve. Skepticism and doubt are even commandments of modern science. Yes, at the level of scientific knowledge it must be so, as far as the material world we can touch and then analyze with reason is concerned. But in things unseen, about which our senses give us no information, we are dependent on internal constructions, (unscientific) intuition - and faith. We verify their correctness from our experience, i.e. indirectly or retrospectively, unless we experience Abrahamic-like encounters. Then we have something that can hardly be explained to those who doubt - but thank God that His Spirit is at work even in the 21st century...

Faith is a struggle for the image of God, because by the fall of man that image has been marred and corrupted, and therefore no man sees God rightly until the veil of deception is removed from his eyes.

Faith is a struggle for the image of God in the heart of man, not just in his head. Faith is not mere conviction. Biblical faith is not just believing something, but trusting someone; it is not just about ideas, but it establishes a new relationship with a person. It becomes a way of justification also because this relationship implies transformation. It is impossible to have trust in God embedded in the heart and go on living as without it.