Faith must be our own
While parents can hope and pray that
their children will share their faith, the passing of faith to the next
generation is far from assured—the Bible describes the corruption of Eli’s
sons, resulting in them being replaced by Samuel as his successor, and David’s
descendants were not able to stay faithful to his covenant with God.
In the end, I believe that each person has to come to faith
for him or herself. While we benefit from exposure to people of faith around
us, we cannot simply “adopt” faith from any of them. Each of us must go through
the struggle, which can include misunderstanding (e.g. many of the disciples),
doubting (e.g. Thomas, among many others), trying to ignore (e.g. Augustine),
or even fighting against (e.g. Paul) faith if it is ultimately going to be our
own. For many historical and more recent people, that struggle takes place in
the person’s 20’s and may not be resolved until the early 30’s. I don’t think
it always happens then—sometimes it’s earlier and sometimes later—and sometimes
it happens more than once in a lifetime. The timing of that decision can be
variable and may come much earlier or much later—the issue is that faith
becomes authentically one’s own.
Trying to hurry your children in making their faith
decisions may hinder their ability to make it authentically (see the chapter on
Seeds not growing in a day). Pray for them, ask them about it periodically,
model it for them (and all) as authentically as you can, but don’t try to force
them: God gave us free will to choose for ourselves and you need to do the same
for your children
And it’s common and reasonable for each of us to need to
keep checking and affirming our faith—I think it’s pretty common that when
people leave the house or go to bed they check and recheck whether the doors
are locked and the stove is off, even when they’re quite sure they did it
already. It seems reasonable to check and recheck your faith, even when you can
feel quite confident that you know it’s true.
Faith is central to Christianity
Based on the Bible, we don’t hope to
be greeted with the words “Well done my good and successful servant” or “my good and intelligent servant.” It’s “my good and faithful servant” that we
hope to hear. Faith is the metric by which you will be measured. I feel like
the song, “Whatever,” by Steven
Curtis Chapman makes the point in an accessible and tangible way.
After all, regarding Abraham, “And he believed in the Lord.
And He counted it to him as righteousness.” And again, “For God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life.”
Despite the importance of the creeds, ultimately, faith
isn’t an articulated set of beliefs, but belief and trust in God and
surrendering to a relationship with him.
A challenge of holding on to faith
comes because, regarding anything miraculous, as time goes on we tend to ask
ourselves whether it really happened and even doubt it did. So the Israelites
were caught up in faith when the sea parted and when manna came down, but, as
time went on, they had a tendency to forget and doubt, and so lost faith. I
think that can easily happen to each of us. Almost like the movie Memento, we need to write things down
for ourselves and hold existing writings close and read them regularly to
remind ourselves of the truth. The Bible is the central part of those existing
writings.
Alcoholics and other addicts have to fight their fights
every day—all of us need to do that with whatever temptations and doubts we
face. We need to fight those fights every minute of every day for the rest of
our lives.
Again, prosperity can be another challenge to holding
faith—while people can fall away because of hardship (e.g. C.S. Lewis lost
faith as a boy because of the loss of his mother), I believe that more people
lose their faith because of prosperity. When things go well, it is very easy to
take credit and believe that it’s all due to your own work and that you can
take care of everything on your own instead of giving the credit to God and
believing that his work is still your salvation. The history of the Israelites
attests that people tend to fall away from God during times of plenty and
success, thinking that they can do it on their own and don’t need any help and
that success is all due to their good work. The Israelites went through this
cycle repeatedly: they would ask God for help, get help and get on firmer
ground or in a better situation, then fall away from God, thinking that they
were in good shape and/or just no longer thought about him, only to then accept
the consequences of inappropriate self-confidence and choices, and finally,
suffer decline which brought them back to calling on God. It seems the more
successful you are the more likely you will take credit for it and not feel the
need for God. So it seems to me that falling away from God is more likely to
happen from success than from failure, when, as Hosea 5:15 points out, “in
their misery they will earnestly seek me.” That also helps explain why Jesus
said that it was difficult for the rich to make it to heaven, which surprised
his hearers, who assumed that being rich was evidence of a good relationship
with God.
Proverbs 30: 8-9 states this challenge, along with that of poverty:
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown
you
and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.
Jesus said he did not come to save the healthy but the sick. Just as riches can be an impediment to faith so can good behavior. People who get it right most of the time can feel justified in their own works and that they don’t need saving (remember the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple). But they do. It’s kind of an eternal “good is the enemy of great” (a quote from “Good to Great” by Jim Collins). As Jesus said, “whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” This is linked to the first of the beatitudes and the importance of confession as part of prayers discussed later. Unless you truly recognize the ways you’ve fallen short, you won’t feel the urgency or maybe even the need to be saved. The refrain lyrics of Charlie Peacock’s/DC Talk’s “In the Light” lament that.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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