Faith, Hope and Love

Faith, Hope and Love.

I don't think that I have ever really understood Faith.

Hope is easy to understand. Hope is the belief that there is a future that will be better than what we experience now. Not much to explain, no need, really.

Love is a more difficult concept. Love encompasses much, but I think we can put this into an analogue that might be easier to understand. Love is the person that God would want us to be. I used to define Love as an action, the result of a feeling of intimacy that causes sacrifice. But I think that Love is more (and less) than an action, because it does not require intimacy and it may not result in sacrifice. Consider the oft-quoted passage from 1 Cor 13:4-8:

"4Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8Love never fails..."

Paul speaks here about Love and how great it is, but check out how Paul uses the word. Paul is describing a person! Now, I've heard and read this passage countless times, but this may be the first time that I've perceived this. I think this is why Jesus said in Matthew 22:40 that all of the Law and the Prophets hang on the commandments to Love. Love is to be the person that God commands us to be, and we are without excuse because inside of us, from the moment we are born to the day that we die, we have within our hearts an understanding of what this means. As surely as we can see creation and everything around us, we can also see what it means to Love.

So, then, we come down to the last thing - Faith.

What may be the heart of the Gospel is this idea of Faith, and how by Faith we are removed from the lists of those deserving of death, and put onto the lists of those deserving of being with God. We do not earn the removal, because it is given it freely (even though it is not free). And yet, we still have to have Faith.

Through study of Romans, we might take it upon ourselves to say that Faith is not the equivalent of works, and is in fact wholly separate from it. So, Faith is not within ourselves to do or not to do. But it still lies in the realm of the human, because it is something that propels us to change ourselves, to turn towards God. And we must have this, on our own.

Does this make sense? I'm not sure. How can something that we think or believe (and therefore the concommitant and resulting action), not be considered works?

I guess we go back to Matthew, for the answer (Matthew 17:20): "And He said to them, "Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you." Or check out Luke 17:5-6: 5The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" 6And the Lord said, "If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and be planted in the sea'; and it would obey you. "

How can anyone move a mountain or uproot a tree? Who is the only one who can do such a thing, who can do what would be otherwise impossible? Well, the answer is obvious, I suppose, so then perhaps Faith is like a portal to God's power, a wi-fi access point for God's will? Hmm, but that would still not explain how we get this portal or access point. We aren't quite there I guess.

Ok, so maybe I need to go back to Matthew, going back to one of the more clear examples of faith (Matthew 8:5-10):

"5And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, 6and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented." 7Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him." 8But the centurion said, "Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9"For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, 'Go!' and he goes, and to another, 'Come!' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this!' and he does it." 10Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, "Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel."

So what is happening here? Why did Jesus name the soldier as having Faith, and a lot of it?

I guess what I see here is that what the soldier had, was an understanding of how things work. Just as when you take a step, you are doing so under the assumption that the next step that you take will result in your foot also hitting ground (thus does locomotion work). So then, did this soldier take it as a matter of fact that if he were to issue orders, so those orders would be followed. It is a given, and the soldier, especially in times of war, would base his very life on this assumption. Let me repeat that: the soldier would base his life on this assumption.

So, then, I guess the answer is upon me now.

Faith is the understanding of God's ordering of the world, that we are not worthy of fellowship with God, and yet we are still given by Grace the chance for our addition into the book of Life. Faith is the understanding that God's justice creates a debt that we can not pay, and yet that debt is paid by the sacrifice by God, and that if we align ourselves to this understanding, we will have our debt paid. Whew!

I guess this is why it is tough for anyone, Christians included, Christians especially included, to have Faith to move mountains or to uproot trees. How hard it is for us to keep to this alignment without changing every part of ourselves, to understand how little the things of this world mean, in the grand scheme of things. We are forced to choose, every moment of our lives, how we are to perceive and assume things around us, and when we choose actions or thoughts that are misaligned with God's purpose, we are doing so without Faith.

Tough words. Tough concepts. More on this later.

-David

The More I Think, The Less I Understand

I vacilate between an excited state and one near despair. I doubt that I am unique, so none of this makes me original or an island unto myself. Yet I feel no kinship with those who share the same burdens as myself. I am an atom, among countless atoms, and worth no more than the potential energy that I have inside of me. But I do not feel myself as part of a greater design, and so there is no structure for me. And so, I am aimless and inert, unable to perceive the fabric of the universe that should be there. I see shifting patterns with one or more stochastic elements but there is no firmament underneath it all. Sometimes I am pulled along for the ride, and other times I am alone, stationary and silent. And none of it gives me hope or desire. Yet I persevere because there is no choice. I am rational, and reason compels me to live. But there is no understanding in reason.

Yet there is still an energy source within me. I cannot tap into it without reaching out to others, and while the energy flows outward, I can sometimes feel a purpose come alive inside of me. It is the connection, the universal truth of fellowship in our fallen state that acts like a siphon and draws me to action. But nothing lasts for ever, and so I fall back towards inertia.

I've not written for a while, mostly because work has picked up and my responsibilities have made it more difficult for me to find the time. Sometimes I have a quiet moment and I reflect, finding a kernel of truth that would make an interesting post but then the epiphany fades, evaporates in front of me and there is nothing I can do to keep the thought whole and cogent. I am left with fragments that make no sense.

Tonight, however, I feel compelled to put my thoughts to page, to keep the discipline and to write my thoughts before they, too, disappear.

Think of a person sitting alone at a table, with a chessboard in front of him. He ponders his options, knowing that there are more chess moves available to him towards the end-game than there are grains of sand on any beach. But he cannot plot his way through the game, because he doesn't know who is he playing against, and thus cannot predict victory or defeat. And yet he must move, because the alternative is not to play - a form of defeat.

So he moves, and a counter-move appears. Now the person knows he has an opponent, but still there is no necessary sign of intelligence or personality in the move. It is just a counter-move. The person moves again, and again a counter-move appears, this time it appears that the opposing player, however invisible, is playing against him to some degree. The person thus sits back in his chair and ponders his next move. The person makes a clever decision and appears to have the early advantage. He sits back, satisfied at his cleverness and foresight in planning.

Then something happens. The chess board disappears and a new chess board appears. The person's moves are still on the board, but the opposing chess pieces are arranged differently, so the advantage has disappeared, and still there is no opponent. Then another chess board appears next to the first. And another chess board appears. And another. More moves to make, more decisions. Still no opponent in sight. And yet the person must continue to move.

Too many moves, too many choices, too few options, no goal, no opponent.

This is how I see life at the moment. We choose a path, and we are forced into situations that are beyond our control. Even if chance and circumstance favors us, we are still playing in a game that has no opponent and no point. There is no victory to be had, because there are always more chess boards, and to stop playing is to resign.

This is life without God.

But, let's say that we add God to the picture here. Now, there IS an opponent. That opponent is me. I am thus playing against myself, and again, there cannot be a victory because either way, I will lose.

What is the point then? Well, the Christian would point out that adding God to the equation changes things infinitely, because God can take us out of the pointless game and into something that is meaning-full. Sounds good, sounds very good. Where it was impossible to stop playing, and where it was impossible to win, now, with God, the impossible becomes possible.

But there is a catch. The catch is, we have to admit defeat, and we have to understand that chess isn't the only thing that is out there. To a chess player, this is a tough pill to swallow. We have to give up playing chess altogether, because it is a pointless game, and we have to admit that everything that we have strived for, everything that we have put our energy toward, has been fruitless on their own.

It is possible that God might have us continue to play chess, but the play would have an entirely different focus. It is possible that we might never play chess again. But regardless, the focus turns away from the chessboard and towards a Power, a Universe, a Creator who knows better.

Yet to a chess player who has only known chess, the risk is high. It may be more palatable to play against the unknown, than it is to live in a world with God where the opponent can only be yourself. At least then, you would not be to blame.

And yet to change, to become more or to become different, in the very least, is the essence of the conflict. At least you would still remain you, the person that you know, if there were no God. But to have God in the very midst of us demands choice. The universe screams the decision into my ears on a daily basis, and I can barely think with all the noise. How can one make a choice without knowing what the consequences will be?

It is easier, then, maybe, to not think so much.

-David