Faith

For those who are keeping track, the new best thing ever is reallivepreacher.com. Big thanks to my good friend Søren for hooking me up. Seriously, if you're ever looking to read a good blog, you gotta check out the preacher. This guy is pure, raw awesome. (If you do read it, read in chronological order, starting with the very first post. It will take you a long time, but if you're serious about reading a blog, this is the only way to do it.)

Talked to an elder from my church the other day about the whole idea of giving away huge amounts of money and trusting God to provide when I need him to. He asked me what exactly I expected God to do. I said I wasn't expecting anything specifically, just that he would keep me fed and clothed and pay my tuition, at the least. Sure, God might provide money in miraculous ways, or somehow give me back twice what I gave, or show me how he used my money to do wonderful things and advance his kingdom. Any of these things would be cool, but at the least, I would expect God to meet my physical needs and pay for school. He asked how I'd feel if God didn't meet these requirements. It hadn't occurred to me. I had thought about the possibility of God "failing" me - breaking my trust and leaving me destitute - but I hadn't considered that such a result might conceivably be the divine plan of an active and involved God. At this moment I realized that God allowing me to give recklessly and then suffer for it would not necessarily mean that he wasn't watching over me, just that he chooses not to intervene in my life.

More and more I'm realizing that there is nothing I can do to force God to act visibly in my life. He cannot be bribed, tricked, goaded, coerced, bought, threatened, taunted or bought. He is not a vending machine. He is not a businessman. He is not a trader or a philanthropist or a rich uncle. God does not make deals. He needs nothing. He wants nothing, except my obedience. God is sovereign and supreme. He is eternal, immortal, invisible. He understands me perfectly, even when I don't understand myself. I am his possession, to do with as he pleases, and he is my lord and master, acknowledged or not, immovable and unquestionable. He is God.

I heard a Pentecostal preacher once who said that he really didn't have any proof for the existence of the God of the Bible, except that his promises can be tested and found to be true. This was surprizing in its self, because I figured a charismatic big-wig would have had his share of supernatural experiences. If I were to ask a Pentecostal preacher why I should believe in God, I would expect to hear about signs and wonders and how he can feel the Holy Spirit moving and stuff like that. But this guy apparently wasn't like that. (I'm not saying that no-one has real spirit-experiences, just that this guy seemingly hadn't. I liked him - he reminded me of me, only he was older and smarter and a better speaker.) This guy says if you want proof that God is active in our world, test his promises. The specific promise he was focusing on that night was the tithing promise in Malachi 3:10-12.

"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit," says the LORD Almighty. "Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty.

Unfortunately, Pentecostal Preacher didn't really explain why he thought this promise still applied to us, new-covenant North American Gentiles 2400 years later. I mean, maybe it does apply, sort of, in some watered down form, but I don't think it has to. And from what I've seen, God doesn't always pour out material blessings on those who tithe. I'm not even sure if God would look after your most basic needs if you tithe. If a starving beggar-boy in a third world country gives away a penny out of every dime he makes, will God keep him from dying? I don't know, I haven't tested this, but I doubt it. The problem with these promise-claimer people is that they'll take any promise or blessing anywhere to anyone and claim it for themselves, ignoring both scriptural and cultural context as well as any restrictions and concurrent curses or punishments. I'd like to study the promises in the Bible some day and make a list of exactly what is promised that probably applies to me today. Here's a few off the top of my head.

1. "I am with you always." I'm sure this is true, but it's not very tangible, and it's definitely not testable.

2. "You will receive power." This is difficult. If we assume that we are still bound to the "great commission", we must also assume that we either have or may receive this "power". Both the context and the Greek word "dunamis" suggest that "power" means tongues and miracles and some kind of supernatural boldness. However, if we believe that we as present-day non-charismatic Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we must assume that "power" does not refer to anything tangible - that is, anything that we might normally call power. Quite a stretch, I think. Another thing: it's not just Acts that places this emphasis on power, the other version of the great commission (Mt 28:18-20) has a similar "power clause", and if you read Mark 16:9-20 as scripture, this version also hinges on the reception of power. So do the sendings out of the disciples in Mt 10/Mk 6/Lk 9, Mk 6 and Lk 10. (There are numerous other references to the vital role of miracle in evangelism that I could give you if you're interested.) You could argue that the calling of Saul in Acts 9 did not promise miraculous power, but it certainly demonstrated it, both in the voice from heaven and the curing of his blindness, and Paul himself did perform many miracles, both for their own sake and for evangelism. If you like searching your Bible, I challenge you to find any call to evangelism by Jesus that is not directly tied to miraculous power. Or find a conversion in Acts which is not explicitly linked to either a miraculous calling or a display of spiritual power. (By my count there are two.) If you can explain to me why I am still called to evangelize without miraculous power, I would be grateful. ("If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice–nor do the churches of God.") This is one of the great Jacobian conundrums.

3. "Ask and it shall be given to you." Uh-oh, this is another tough one. I think there are limitations on this. I think people have made excuses about why this doesn't work out in practice the way it looks in red ink. Right now I'm having a hard time caring. This is another frustration for another day.

4. "I will come back and take you to be with me." Wonderful. Seriously, this is cool. This is why it's worth it to be a Christian. But without in any way limiting the coolness of this promise, allow me to note that is is not testable until it actually happens.

There are probably more of these promises, but that's all I could think of quickly. What I'm trying to get at with all of that is that there really aren't any categorical, testable, claimable promises out there. There are promises that are vaguely comforting but totally non-specific and non-experiential (eg. #1). There are the ones that seem to have been broken, which some conclude must have expired without notice (#2). There are the ones that are seem to be real and exciting and significant but don't live up to our expectations, and to which we must add all kinds of provisoes to excuse (#3). And then of course there are the future promises, which will hopefully be fulfilled in spectacular fashion some day, but do little for day-to-day life (#4). There are no fleeces for us, there are no dares from God, there are no real and testable promises. If anything, the promises of God disillusion and confuse me, particularly those of the 2nd and 3rd category.

The tangible, supernatural expression of God is not to be had - at least, it is not to be dished out on request to people like me. The promises of God are expired, or yet to be fulfilled, or do not deliver what they seem to pledge. What's left? (Please note, I'm not angry about this. I have been in the past, but I'm not now. I'm not saying God is a jerk. I'm not saying I have it rough or it's not fair or God owes me something. I'm not whining, I'm not asking for your sympathy, I'm just saying that this is my life as I see it. Please bear this in mind.) God is silent towards me. You know this. I pray, God is silent. I read, God is silent. I fast, God is silent. This is a fact. You can say that he's speaking and I'm not hearing, but it's all the same. I've put forth my best effort and God has chosen not to respond in a way that I can perceive, therefore he is silent. God's promises are riddles. They are not testable, they are not bankable. God is silent.

Some Christians will tell you that anyone who doesn't believe in God is either deluding themselves or consciously denying what deep down they know is true, presumably so they can continue to live in sin. This is stupid. People who say this, I think, don't listen to non-Christians, they just preach at them. Well, I shouldn't say that. I haven't done a fair test on a representative sample of all those who reject Christ. What I should say is that in my experience, there is no one reason that people to either accept or reject Christ. In fact, there is no compelling reason that all people should believe in Christ. There are no easy answers or easy divisions or easy graphable data. (Well, there is one thing: the vast majority of Christians I talk to say that they are Christians because they feel like they need to be. They didn't like how they were before, or they're afraid of life or death, or they feel like they need to believe in God to be able to function. Not scientific reasons. Not supernatural experiences. Psychological needs. Draw whatever conclusions you like.) What I'm getting at here is that the world doesn't work the way we Christians would like it to. We'd like to have a world in which scientific evidence compelled us to believe the Christian God, a world in which all good and honest truth-seeking people eventually became Christians, and only the deliberately evil and perverse resisted. We try to convince ourselves we live in such a world, but we don't. I'm not saying Christianity is stupid, just that non-Christianity is not stupid. This is a tough thing for some people to accept, but from where I stand, there is no other option. It seems to me that God has carefully and meticulously created my world to appear Godless. He's wiped away all his fingerprints and spread a film of dust across the floor. (I do think intelligent design is the most logical explanation for the existence of this world, but daily life is a different story.) I see very little in the world today that suggests to me that God is active. I've come to believe this is part of God's plan - it could hardly have escaped his notice.

It's funny how really stupid things can affect me sometimes. I try to be a good cynic, but I'm just too emotional, and sometimes the stuff I sneer at breaks through and affects me. So I have a confession to make: the other day I watched part of a direct-to-video animated movie. It wasn't Disney (I'm not that depraved) but it was direct-to-video. It was called Joseph: King of Dreams, and it was done by the Prince of Egypt people. In my defense, it was a Saturday and I had an exam on Monday, so I was in procrastination mode. My diversion radar was searching desperately for a way to put off the inevitable studying. It found a movie. It wasn't very good, but somehow in spite of the mediocre script and the mediocre animation and the mediocre songs, one scene managed to resonate with me. It's the one where Joseph's brothers throw him in a pit, and then decide to sell him as a slave. Joseph is thunderstruck. The slave traders are dragging him away and he's pleading with his brothers, shouting "I'm your brother! I'm your brother!" It struck me that Joseph really got hosed here. And for some reason I saw this guy not as Perfect Joseph from the Bible, this glowing saint in a painting, the man of whom we have no record of sin. I saw him as just a normal guy who was shamed and betrayed and forced into slavery. It's really beyond imagination, that the people closest to him could come to hate hate him so much that they disowned and abused him and sold him to foreign slave-lords for a few petty coins. I was trying to think of a modern equivalent for this - something someone could do to me that would have that kind of impact. The closest I could come is if I were a young woman, and a trusted friend or relative took me away to another city and forced me to become a prostitute. This is powerful stuff. And it made me wonder what was going through Joseph's head as they dragged him to Egypt and sold him as a laborer, or as he was framed and thrown in prison for following God's commandments. He'd had some cool dreams once, but that was long ago. There's no record of God comforting or reassuring him at any time. And I can't say this for sure, but I'd bet that Joseph was pretty mad at God sometimes. I remember reading my picture bible as a child and seeing the picture of Joseph in the dungeon. Scruffy, dirty men brood in the corners, glaring at the hansom young Joseph who kneels saint-like and serene in the center of the cell, praying. I bet this isn't how it looked when Joseph was first thrown in prison. I bet he was very, very angry at God. But we know that at some point Joseph decided to trust God. In the animated movie he sings a corny song that says "You know better than I. You know the way. I've let go the need to know why. For you know better than I." Somehow that resonated with me.

But let me back up. At the beginning of this entry I talked about the possibility of "risking" hugely for God and having great faith that he will provide, and getting burned for it. I think this is very possible, in fact, I think this is the most likely result of trusting God with your physical needs. As I said, God has created this world to appear Godless. So what do I do? I think it would be wise in this world to just live my life and do whatever makes me feel godly. Develop a disciplined devotional life. Become good at writing and good at exhorting, so that I could create a really uplifting and inspirational blog thing that people will read and think was so cool and so honest, so real. I could do this, I think. Probably I could even fool myself, unconsciously writing the script of my life to bring me to some powerful climax of brokenness and faith. I could throw a veil of godliness over my heart and a veil of contentedness over my mind, and only God would know that it was all self-serving and self-deceiving, a prozac lie. Part of me wants this. Part of me wants to find a drug that will help me forget, an alcohol which will wash away the insatiable longing, soothing my mind and whispering that everything is fine now, I am content and fulfilled, and tomorrow does not exist. I hate my life. I cannot truly live, as I count living, and I cannot die until he calls me. In the mean time, what do I do? In an earlier post I spoke about my desire to find a clay that will dull the edge of my hunger. A patch for my God-shaped hole. This sounds scary and wrong, but what else can I do? If your father does not feed you, you must beg and scavenge, swallowing whatever slime or mould you can find to keep you breathing. This is the way of things in our world.

What I'm talking about is what I call survival spirituality. This is something nearly all of us do, I suspect. It's a process of masking and bandaging our disappointments and disillusionments, guarding ourselves against further hurts by risking nothing and covering up for God. We throw excusing clauses on our prayers - "If it be your will" type stuff. We say this not out of a genuine, tried and tested trust in God's judgment, but out of caution, out of a need to provide God with an out. Survival Spirituality is a Jenga game. We trust seldom and trust safely. We analyze the risk of being let down, we search for an easier way, we test the ground carefully - a wiggle, a jiggle. The trusting its self is done breathlessly. We cringe, anticipating a collapse at any time. We cover up for God the way a child covers up for a negligent father. We take on God's responsibilities, we make excuses, we cover our scars and hide our hunger. We thought we understood God once - we thought he had promised us good things, but we paid the price for our naivete. We shrug off this innocent blunder with an uneasy laugh, "Of course, we didn't know better. But what do you expect? This is the way life is in this world, this is how it's always been." If you press us we become defensive of God. "What are you saying? Who are you to tell God what to do? He died for you, he loves you, and he's coming back. He hasn't forgotten us, he just needed to leave us for a while, to let us grow up. We have to be able to face our disappointments and overcome our childish fantasies. You've got to come to God with a rational, grown up faith. You've got to be sensible and reverent. Anyway, he's given us so much. Isn't it a little ungrateful of us to ask for more?" We have excuses for all the confusing promises, we have explanations for the silence and the distance and the pain. "Yes, we're a bit hungry, but hunger can be a good thing. You've got to be hungry to want the bread of life. Some day, we'll be filled. But we live in a fallen world, and what did you expect..." This is how we survive.

I admit I've cast this in a very negative light. Perhaps I'm being selfish or manipulative. Maybe I just need to grow up. But I'm hungry. And honestly, I hate my life. I hate my emptiness and my tepidness. I hate it, I hate it. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings. I want to know Christ. I want to know the power. I want to know the fellowship of his sufferings. Please, anyone, this is what I desire. I want Christ and power and suffering. Show me Jesus or give me hell.

(I write these posts over a period of several days. I need to tell you that the stuff above about "hunger", about hating my life and wanting to wash away my restless pain with some kind of spiritual drug seems strange to me now. Now, as I write this bracket, I am fairly content and fairly peaceable towards the silent God and my everyday, pallid world. I'm not saying that the longing and the emotion expressed above are lies, only that I do not feel this way all the time. Which is my true self - the contentedness or the restlessness? Which is better? I don't know. Jacob is a strange creature, I haven't yet figured him out.)

I'm always confused when people compare modern-day faith with the faith of Bible characters. To me, there is little similarity. When we talk about "having faith in God", we either mean believing he exists, or we mean... Something weird and nebulous that I don't understand. Something about how God will "always be there for you" or "never let you down" or something comparatively empty and enigmatic. Or sometimes we mean that we think God has "called" us to do something, and we have to have faith that he is in fact calling us, and that whatever happens, if we follow [what we believe to be] his "call", it will work out well. I don't see much in common between this faith and Biblical faith. Biblical faith (with the exception of a few people like Joseph) is of the kind where God saying to Moses "Yo, I'm God. See this burning bush? See my power? Here I'll teach you some tricks, and then I want you to go defy Pharaoh. Don't worry - I'm powerful, and I'm going to use you to bring him down." And then Moses has to have faith - not that God exists, not that God is powerful and active, not that God is calling him, but that God is telling him the truth. Biblical faith is Joshua being visited by an Angel who tells him to do something really stupid, and God will give them victory. All Joshua has to do is believe that God is telling him the truth. Biblical Faith is Abraham believing God's covenant, it's Gideon trusting God with his battle plan, it's prophet after prophet coming before evil kings and speaking the words given to them by God himself. Biblical faith is Peter - who by the way has just seen Jesus feed 5000 men, and who now sees Jesus walking on water, and who has Jesus' personal assurance that he won't sink - stepping out of the boat. Are you following this? Me trying to figure out whether I should give away all my money or become a vegetarian or continue to be a Christian has nothing in common with the faith of most Biblical characters.

But it does have something in common with the faith of Real Live Preacher. This is a snippet from his life story:

Turns out Christianity is an Eastern religion. The earliest Christians were Hebrews. Semites. People of the East. They did not know how to separate mind from body. They were holistic before holistic was cool.

In our world we have separated mind from body to our great loss. Here a man may betray his wife and neglect his children, but say he loves them "down inside."

Bullshit. There is no "down inside." Love is something you do, not something you feel.

Likewise, we think having faith means being convinced God exists in the same way we are convinced a chair exists. People who cannot be completely convinced of God's existence think faith is impossible for them.

Not so. People who doubt can have great faith because faith is something you do, not something you think. In fact, the greater your doubt the more heroic your faith.

I learned that it doesn't matter in the least that I be convinced of God's existence. Whether or not God exists is none of my business, really. What do I know of existence? I don't even know how the VCR works.

What does matter is whether or not I am faithful. I think faithful is a hell of a good word. It still has some of its original shine. It still calls us to action.

So that's it. I like this idea of faith being faithfulness. I like that I don't have to sweat it when I wake up some mornings and the whole idea of God seems stupid. I like that my job is not to convice other people of God's existence, but to denonstrate my faithfulness to his teachings. Here's some more RLP. This is a conversation between him and his friend George, who is terminally ill:

One day George said, "I wish I could believe in God. I really do. I'd like to go to your church, and sing hymns, and be a part of something bigger than myself. I'm at the end of my life, and I don't think I've made a real difference in the world. My life hasn't really mattered to anyone. But, I just can't believe in God, so..."

You should never tell this preacher you don't believe in God.

"You don't believe in God? So what. Sometimes I don't either. The important question in life is not a question of belief. What's really important is whom you serve. I think it's serving God that makes life meaningful."

"You mean I could go to church, and sing, and do stuff, and all that, without believing in God?"

"Hell yes. I hope so, or else I better find another fuckin job."

"You don't believe in God?"

"Well, I do now, mostly. I still have my bad days. It's complicated. Belief comes later for some people, for people like you and me."

"What would I do? How would I get started?"

"I don't know, I guess just come to church and sing."

Understand that this preacher NEVER asks people to become Christians. If anything, I shoo people away. I consider Christianity to be a pretty stiff commitment, and I don't ever sugar coat it.

If someone is seeking a spiritual path and wants to journey with me, I'm fine with that. I'll shoulder my pack, help get his adjusted, and we'll move on down the road together. I don't really give a shit about making converts. That's not my business. I will walk with people though, if they want.

That's really all church is about anyway. We're a bunch of rag-tag pilgrims sharing the road and taking turns shielding each other from the wind. Sometimes we carry each other's packs for a spell. We share maps and provisions and friendship. We serve God by serving each other.

This makes sense to me. It doesn't make sense for God to insist that we always believe in him, or that we be able to make other people believe in him. It does make sense for him to say "This is what I want from you: act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." I can do that.

If this sounds weird to you, I've got another story - the story of Mother Teresa (found through the Preacher), which I think may be the modern equivalent of the Joseph story I was searching for above. The gist of it is that Jesus appeared to her in visions and called her away from her beloved life as a nun to service in the slums of Calcutta. However, the visions ceased abruptly when she arrived, and she began to feel an isolation from God which remained until her death. This is amazing to me. Brother Lawrence lived with chronic pain, but he felt a closeness with God throughout his life of service. Yet Mother Teresa, perhaps the most admired and venerated Christian of the last century, did her service in depression and darkness. I'm awestruck.

I'm thinking now that if Mother Teresa could do what she did for so long while feeling abandoned by God, maybe it's alright that I feel hungry. Maybe it's an honor that I am one of those who "do not see, yet believe". (Or perhaps more accurately: do not believe, yet are faithful.)

So that's what I'm thinking about faith.