The Mystery of Faith

Your physical eyes 

and your intellect 

are not sufficient  

to sustain you 

on this journey 

nor through these storms 

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (ESV)

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  (KJV)

How is it possible to be assured of things hoped for?  The very nature of hope involves the not presently having that which is hoped for.  Being certain of that which is hoped for is almost an oxymoron.  The two generally don’t go together.  

Can one have evidence for that which cannot be seen?  Evidence is by nature something that can be witnessed.  For example; evidence in the courtroom is either something tangible like pictures, video, fingerprints or it is the testimony of a witness who saw or heard something relevant to the case.  Can you imagine going to court and only being able to rely only upon evidence that did not fit into either of these two categories?   

Intangible evidence and certain hope  

Could it be that faith is something that cannot be carefully explained sufficiently enough clear away the fog of mystery?  Could it be that mystery itself is a distinct characteristic of faith in the God who cannot be seen?  Could it be that faith is the mysterious means with which to relate to the mysterious Holy Spirit, God with us?    

It is not surprising that mystery abounds here for God is not seen, yet He is and has been believed in by countless people around the world both today and throughout history.  How does one relate to the God who is not seen?  Not with physical eyes, nor with intellect alone, but by something that God alone gives, namely faith.  It is a glorious grace that we may know God via the gift of faith that God alone gives.  He gives that which we need to know Him, and that apart from which we may never truly know Him. 

The 11th chapter of Hebrews, the famous “Faith” chapter begins with an interesting yet fairly mysterious definition of faith in verse one.  Yet it is noteworthy that after this brief definition, more effort is not given to further illuminate what this faith is exactly.  In stead of further defining this perplexing topic, the author of Hebrews instead resorts to a masterful historical list of what faith in the unseen God looks like when put into practice.  This beautiful chapter of Scripture is powerful in its description of many who displayed their faith in God via their actions.  

The Apostle Paul, who taught extensively on the massive importance of faith, turns to the Old Testament to illustrate and explain this topic.  Abraham is Paul’s subject to highlight the nature of the faith that justifies.  “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.”  Three times this text is referenced, first in Genesis 15:6, and then by Paul in Romans 4:3 and Galatians 3:6.  That this incident is thrice recorded in scripture is no doubt indicative of significant importance.  

The story of Abraham begins with him as a pagan living among pagans, when he is encountered by God.  This encounter is such that from the very beginning of this relationship, God gives Abraham instruction.  Almost as if one of the partners in this relationship was God, and the other a subordinate follower…  Maybe this is the pattern that would be repeated throughout time.  This relationship was initiated by God and followed by Abraham.  It is worthy of notice that the instruction given to Abraham was one that was both uncomfortable and mysterious.  “Go… to the land that I will show you.” (Gen. 12:1)  This required packing up and leaving the familiar, leaving family and friends behind, drastically impacting the lives of others who would go with him, and all while not knowing where it was exactly that he was going. 

God asked of Abraham the impossible.  Twice.  

Faith was the means that resulted in Abraham’s obedience to the unseen God.  He saw that which could not be seen.  He believed when the odds were insurmountable.  Faith beholds God beyond the impossible.  Faith trusts the God who is bigger than the trial.  Faith grabs ahold of God when there is nothing else to hold onto.  

Job

Faith is how battered Job endured absolute devastation, one minute at a time.  How could Job have weathered such colossal personal tragedies otherwise?  

The Church Throughout History

Faith was the means with which William Tyndale translated a significant portion of the Bible into English, despite death threats from the King.  By faith he persevered in this task until he was killed for his faithful obedience to the assignment of God.

Faith was the rock that Martin Luther stood upon as he confronted the only church of the day.  By faith he believed God’s Word though everyone else in the church, it seemed, believed many things contrary.  By faith he battled theologically, living as a fugitive and translating scripture into the language of the people.  By faith he persevered until the Protestant Reformation was birthed. 

Faith was the weapon with which William Wilberforce and friends waged war against the evils of the slave trade for many decades.  They battled the socially accepted wickedness decade after decade until that great foe was vanquished from England, and ultimately America as well.  

Faith was the motivation with which countless missionaries left comfort and country for suffering, tragedy, and the unspeakable joy of spreading the Gospel throughout the world.

Faith was the furnace that forged a Nation that would become One Nation Under God.  Freedom to pursue a relationship with God, unsanctioned by the Government was the fuel that fired this great forge.  America was literally birthed through faith in God.  

Faith was the morning light that shown through the former slave Frederick Douglas and many others in America to overthrow the lengthy midnight of slavery.  

Faith was the courage that gripped Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many others like him to combat the evils of the Nazi regime.  Faith would not permit these to succumb to the comfortable apathy of countless others who filled the pews in Germany.  Faith was action and speaking, thus lack of action and silence a lack of faith.  

Time nor ink would permit an exhaustive list, yet suffice it to say that eternity will provide enough time with which to learn of all the courageous battles of faith throughout history, and of the faithful God apart from which no such endeavors would exist.

You and I

What does faith look like in your life?  Is it like Job, trusting minute by minute in the goodness of God, while the hurricane rages?  Is it like Abraham, journeying without knowing where you will end up, or how or what you will end up doing?  

Has He called you to something?  If so, chances are that circumstances will be significantly difficult enough that it will take His faith to believe Him.  Your physical eyes and your intellect are not sufficient to sustain you on this journey nor through these storms.  Faith alone in Christ alone is the only way to follow wherever He leads, to weather the treacherous storms of life, and to arrive at your much hoped for destination.   

“And without faith it is impossible to please Him”
Hebrews 11:6a (ESV)

The Wastefulness of God

Guest Post by KG:

I went with my wife Su one day, one rainy day, as she stopped at a couple of garage sales. I sat in the car and waited while she ‘cased the joint’. As I set I began to watch the rain, how it washed everything: the streets the houses the cars and the lawns. Suddenly a fall leaf fell on the window and was immediately pasted there by the misting rain. My attentions to the effect of the rainfall shifted to the leaf. I was struck by its amazing beauty and complexity between the serrated edges, its symmetry and the articulate branching of the veins. As I looked closer and closer it seemed that they spread out ever more finely. "What a waste" I said to myself without thinking. I knew that there were millions of leaves that littered everything and each was as artistically crafted as the one on my car window.  “Isn’t such careful architecture and finery spent on this one leaf (or any leaf for that matter) just a waste of good art?” And it is all so temporary, just a few months of the year. The tree takes in sunlight, minerals and moisture and builds its bulky foliage. And not just any foliage but these masterfully crafted leaves... hundreds of millions of them. I knew that in the leaves that populate each tree (I’m told 6 million on the average large elm) there are millions and millions of cells in each leaf, every one of which has a blueprint for building another tree with leaves included.  In the end there is just decay and dirt, like the artist who completes a masterpiece only to crumple it up and throw it away. What a waste.

It didn’t take long for my thoughts to multiply. What I judged to be the case in the single instance of this one leaf/tree is true of even more that I wasn’t seeing. This is true of every living plant whether it blooms and is carefully cultivated in the flower pot or wild and grows on the remote and inaccessible mountain side. This is true of every enormously complex insect that roam's the forest floor or the farmer's field or for the briefest 24 hour life hovers over and inhabits the decaying carcass on the shore of an island. This is true of every animal that lives as a child's pet or inhabits the sea or roams the Serengeti or clings to the roof of the nearby cave. This is true of the grass that grows or the plants that sprouts up in the otherwise vacant field or the fungus that pops up everywhere and in abundance over all the earth however extreme the condition. Billions of times over again and again this exquisite parade marches relentlessly on. Finally, this is true of people whatever their color or size for however long their life may be.  And then the uninvited thought came to mind: and a large majority of all that wonder no one will ever see. What a waste.

Looking back I have to admit that it is clear to me now that I was indulging in an all too familiar way of thinking, a God absent or ‘horizontal’ way of thinking. I am a believer but I am not surprised at the things that go on in my head. I have found that it is not at all unusual for me to carry at least two contradictory ways of looking at events or issues in my head at the same time. In the case of my reflections on the leaf pasted against the window it is this sort of  ‘horizontal’ thinking. It is for me the default way of looking at things. It is that way because that is natural to me. And it natural to me because it is my earliest way of looking at life, i.e. with God there but only figured into the scheme of things. The other way of looking at life, a very different ‘other’, is the God tempered world and is ‘vertical’ in its orientation. I have been at pains to fit into it ever since God’s world caved in on me. It is the God-haunted world in which I now live. Because of that I live a dimensionally challenged life shuffling between life in the vertical and the horizontal.

The world is described in Genesis as a “good” thing. It is so not because God was merely commenting on how the things he had made met some necessity or satisfied some particular need he had.  When God said “it is good” he meant little more than that it flowed from his own goodness and was like himself, good. He liked what he had made, much like an artist who reflects on his own finished work. He liked it which is more than just a statement about God’s ‘tastes’.  It was good and he was satisfied with what he had made. If there was an audience it was the artist himself. It was what he wanted. As he said in his final inquisition of Job, “Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt,  to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?” (Job 38:25-27). In other words, no one ever sees some of God’s best work. God’s ‘performances’ are meant to satisfy an audience of one.

This exquisite orchestration that I took to be a ‘wasted’ effort was and is for the designer of that leaf a personal thing, his thing, and because it is his work, his fingerprints are left all over it. G. K. Chesterton talks about his own experience  in his book Orthodoxy. There he says that the impression left on his thinking by this phenomena of recurrence in nature was eventually life changing for him. “Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational. It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses of the same astonishing shape. I should have fancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society. So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. I speak here only of an emotion, and of an emotion at once stubborn and subtle. But the repetition in Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea.” In other words, the occurrence of reoccurrence can have other than prodigal implications. Seen from the vantage point of the vertical our Father is younger than we are. He has the eternal appetite of infancy which in the moment of finishing a task shows his delight with the joyful appellation ‘do it again’. It is to his glory that he seems to exult so evidently in the repetition of the things he deems to be ‘good’. How else might a God drop hints about his life?

My time in those  idle ‘arboreal’ moments  eventually landed me in the lap of an ongoing project. It is a project begun years before when I had read something C.S. Lewis had written in Christian Reflections. It had made sense at the time but was hard to integrate into my selfish life, my life framed in the horizontal. Lewis had made the observation that there is an important difference between gratitude and adoration. Gratitude exclaims, very properly, "How good of God to give me this." Adoration says, "What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!" He adds,  in adoration “(o)ne's mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.” I suppose that for me gratitude begins and ends in the self. That’s not a bad thing. God calls us to do it. But adoration takes us beyond ourselves. It is genuinely “un-selfing”. It is a moment of wonder into which I am, for at least a moment, erased.  Adoration always leads me to follow the moment back to its source. It was just that sort of moment I was having that wet Fall day.

Sometimes our first thoughts on a given subject aren’t our last thoughts on that subject. At least it shouldn't be when two plains of existence are lodged in the same person’s head. In all of my attention to and thoughts about such beauty my first thought suggested the conclusion that without an audience, without watching eyes, all of this is gloriously wasteful. My second thoughts however led me to wonder about the kind of being who ladles such attention on something so ephemeral. It was truly (eventually) a timeless moment. While my bride was hunting treasures I was preoccupied with unpacking one, “lost in wonder, love and praise”.