The Struggle of finding and holding onto Faith
The struggle in finding and holding
faith seems to me natural, and perhaps healthy and necessary if it is to be
your own. It also seems common: there many, many autobiographies of people who
struggled and then found faith, but a few that I have found helpful are:
• Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis and the play and movie, “The Most Reluctant Convert” about his journey to faith
• Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton
• Confessions by Augustine of Hippo,
• A Man Called Peter by Catherine Marshall, and
• The Language of God by Francis Collins.
I Did It For You, by Lecrae gives his story in the form of a song.
There are also tons of books on faith and belief, especially in relation to reason, with a few of my favorites being,
• The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
• Belief by Francis Collins
• Does God Exist? by Hans Kung, and
• Fides et Ratio by Pope John Paul II
A recent book by
Justin Kendrick, pastor at Vox Church, How
to Quiet a Hurricane, and the associated podcast and Vox Church sermons
give a good sense of how faith prepares you for difficulty in life. As he
points out, we are each only one phone call away from a hurricane (e.g. news of
a bad diagnosis or that a loved one was in an accident), and faith gives us the
solid ground on which to stand when it hits. The podcast account of the man who
lost a young son is both challenging and inspiring. More generally, I think
that Justin’s sermons (and those of other Vox pastors, all available online)
are valuable if you are looking for guidance.
While not really about faith, Tom
Holland’s “Dominion” is a book written by an atheist in which he gives an
historical account of the profound and pervasive impact and influence of
Christianity on the world. As one (also atheist) reviewer wrote, “Holland
argues that we are like fish swimming in essentially Christian water. We barely
even notice we are doing it.” It, along with Will Durant’s History of Civilization, particularly Volume 3: Caesar and Christ, seem valuable reading for anyone
interested in the history of Christianity.
Atheist British journalist Matthew Parris also focuses on
the impact of Christianity, but specifically on international aid in Africa:
“Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes
people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The
change is good.”
Holland, Durant, and countless others have attested that the
earliest Christians drew credibility from their willingness to die even
gruesome deaths for what they believed, and they drew converts by the way they
lived, sacrificing and prioritizing others, the poor, the sick, the imprisoned,
the fatherless. Christians have long played critical roles in developing
hospitals, universities, and schools as ways of improving the lives of others.
Whether you believe in the Greek
idea of the logos, which they saw as
a universal divine truth that permeated all of reality and was the source of
order in the universe and human reasoning…
or Einstein’s sense of God, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who
reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists”…
or something like The Force from Star Wars, an energy field
that binds the universe together…
or a sense of a Spirit,
which is where CS Lewis started his path from atheism to being convinced of
God’s existence to Christian faith,
it’s hard to look at the
universe, from the most distant stars and nebula, to the flight of the
hummingbird, the magic of fireflies, and the awful beauty of lightning, to the
workings of bosons and dark matter, and not be struck by the intricate and consistent
workings of it all. Scientists believe that it can be studied and explained and
understood and that means they believe that it fits together by some plan or
design, whether formal or informal.
If you have trouble
believing in God, whatever you understand that means, ask yourself whether you
believe in love. As discussed in another chapter, the word “love” is used may
ways, but here I mean what the Greeks called Agape: unconditional selfless love
that is empathetic, truly wants the best for the other, and continues even if
unreciprocated. Christians often say that “God is love”—that the core and
essence of God is agape love. If we take the latter seriously and literally,
then we would say that if you believe in this kind of love, you believe in
God—like C.S. Lewis referring to “Spirit,” you may not have fully recognized or
acknowledged God, but you perceive and believe in his essence, which is love.
Each individual’s
ability to perceive and believe is something to consider. We all have different
gifts and the gifts we have in different degrees. Some of us fully understand
how a car works and others are happy just to know how to drive one. Some people
are gifted at writing poetry or understanding particle physics or growing
things or cooking or teaching, and others have no capacity to perceive or
understand the fundamentals of these things. Some people are sensitive to the
“bends” (caisson disease) and coming rain, and some aren’t. And yet we have
grown accustom to the idea that there are people who do have those capabilities
and senses, and to believing that what they are talking about actually exists.
I’m pretty good at math, but there are others who are better and some that are
far better. Likewise, I have a strong sense of God’s presence and voice in my
life through tiny miracles and things that happen every day. But I am sure that
there are others who have a stronger sense of that and some far stronger—some
people seem to sense spiritual things with clarity and confidence, while others
might not sense them at all. I believe it’s a gift that comes in degrees like
every other gift. My job is to be thankful and make the most of what I have and
use it in the ways I’m led.
The challenge for believers who want to share their faith is
this: if you arrived in a land in which no one else could see, how could you
convince them that visibility or the visible world existed? A key part of this
comes from Isaiah 50 and relying on light coming from God instead of light
created by us—it is God’s job to call and convert people, and our role is to
support, and try not to impede, that.
As I discuss in the chapter, “Finding your keys,” evidence
of things not observed directly is often critical. A shadow gives a sense of
the thing casting the shadow without seeing the thing directly. There are many
things that you can’t observe directly, but there is evidence of them from
breezes and people’s actions and reactions, and other things that are
observable and point to existence of a cause. And there is sometimes evidence
in things that are not there but would be expected to be—a sound, a light, even
a person. (many mysteries are solved using this fact.) In the Bible,
credibility of the story comes in part from many unexpected components— the
fact that women were named as first reporters of the resurrection and wouldn’t
be chosen if making it up since women were not seen as credible in that
culture, from the fact that the Gospels and other writings make many of the
reporters and protagonists look bad, and from the fact that many of those who
were witnesses and believers accepted torture and death rather than recanting.
These and other features point to motivation that is caused by something
credible.
As Keller and others have observed,
1. Both
Christians and atheists are making assumptions about what things to have faith
in
2. Among
them, atheists, who are working on “how” and “when,” but cannot study “why”
because they assume or believe there is no “why”
3. Perhaps
oversimplified, atheists and Christians just differ in which assumptions and
beliefs they find most plausible.
Ultimate truth
An important first assumption is
that there is such a thing as ultimate truth, known by God, and being revealed
to us through study, contemplation, science, and revelation. I mention this in
contrast to relativism—the idea that “truth” is human-centered and depends on
our experiences and perspectives. One common statement of this is the phrase,
“Perception is reality”—I have often heard people say that and seem to mean not
“Perceptions and perspective are important and you need to consider them,” but,
“What is true depends on the perceiver.” It is true that each of us perceives
things differently, based on our genetics, experience, context, etc.—those
differences are, in fact, part of the ultimate truth—but I believe there is an
ultimate truth to things.
I think most scientists, believers or not, think that
ultimate truth exists and are motivated by their search for it. Our ability to
discover and articulate the truth is another matter, limited by our own
intelligence and tools, and also by the “searching for keys under the light”
problems discussed above and in another chapter—our inability to observe some
things directly. And yet, even then, we can often see evidence of ultimate
truth indirectly if we look carefully, in reflections, shadows, echoes, the flutter
of leaves, and even in things missing that should be there.
Sections in this chapter:
- The heart of faith
- The core message and goal for your life
- Seeking to trust God and become more like Jesus
- Knowing your role—and God’s
- Fruit of the Spirit
- Managing our priorities and our praise
- Identity, the creeds, and unity
- The struggle of finding and holding faith
- Faith must be our own
- Levels and types of faith
- Faith vs. knowledge
- Faith and the Law and Works
- Free Will and The Fall
- Seeking to understand the Bible and life through discernment
- The challenge of discernment
- Handling different discernments
- "Our own words"
- Exploring challenging passages and ideas
- The importance of prayer
- Personal reflections
- The importance of living the life
- It’s not too late
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