Category: Faith

Mark Galli has made an interesting post relating to the research described in the book which I reviewed yesterday. The research found that many people who were at an advanced level of spiritual maturity were dissatisfied with their church, largely because they feel that they are not “being fed” by their church; that is, the church is not helping them to continue in their spiritual growth.

Willow Creek proposed to address this problem by coaching people to become self-feeders, taking more responsibility for their own spiritual growth. But Galli asks a pertinent question: Should we be encouraging this apparent spiritual narcissism by helping people become “self-feeders”? The implication seems to be that “my faith” is about “my feeding and spiritual growth”, rather than being about worshipping God and serving others.

In Luke 17 (verse 5), the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith (a sort of “feed me” request). Jesus replies that the tiniest amount of faith is enough to do great things. He then says that servants shouldn’t expect to be fed at the end of a hard day in the field. Instead, the servants should serve supper, and then say, “We are unworthy servants. We have done our duty.” Maybe people who are at an advanced level of spiritual maturity need to concentrate on serving others and not feeding themselves.

The leaders of Grace Presbyterian Church in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, are under investigation for treason, according to a report from Christianity Today. Kazakhs are expected to be muslims, and Russians are expected to be orthodox. Anyone who subscribes to a minority faith is likely to be regarded with suspicion. Religious oppression seems to be rising to a new level in the ninth-largest country in the world (in terms of area – Australia is the sixth largest).

Another article in Christianity Today describes how Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has been clamping down on church leaders who are critical of him. Pastors are regularly subjected to surveillance and intimidation. Government agents attend church services and question churchgoers. Any attempt to do what is good or right is viewed with political suspicion.

Just as poverty in any part of the world is something which we have to take personally, oppression of people for their faith is something which we have to take personally. Christians everywhere are called to share in the suffering of fellow-Christians anywhere. Faith is not true faith unless you are willing to pay a price for it.

What exactly does it mean to “have faith in Jesus”? It’s a relatively simple concept. It’s just a matter of responding positively to Jesus’s invitation: “Follow me.” However, the implications of following are far-reaching. A decision to follow Jesus demands a much higher level of faith than simply believing that God exists.

Contrary to many popular misrepresentations, following Jesus does not involve living a safe, conservative, unchallenging lifestyle. It involves leaving behind things which you consider dear, and living your life for others rather than yourself. Jesus didn’t promise prosperity to his followers; he promised homelessness and the cross. He told his followers to give their possessions away. He told them that they would have to lose their lives in order to gain life.

So it takes a big step of faith when you accept Jesus’s invitation: “Follow me.” You could be saving money for your future, but Jesus calls you to give it all away. You could be achieving all your goals in life, but Jesus calls you to cast them aside and live the rest of your life serving others. According to Jesus, it is only by dying to yourself that you can truly start living.

One of the standard lines of argument used by many atheists nowadays is, “There is no evidence for the existence of God, so I won’t believe in God until someone convinces me of his existence.” Those who put forward the argument seem to think that it is soundly based, but in my view it is illogical, for reasons which can be explained quite simply.

The first part of the argument, “There is no evidence for the existence of God,” is like claiming that there is no evidence for global warming. There is plenty of evidence for global warming, but there is evidence against it as well. Based on the available evidence, the vast majority of people believe in global warming. There is evidence for the existence of God, and there is evidence for the non-existence of God. Based on the available evidence, the vast majority of people who have ever lived have reached the conclusion that there is a God or gods.

The second part of the argument, “I won’t believe in God until someone convinces me of his existence,” makes the irrational assumption that it is somehow someone else’s job to prove to me beyond doubt that God exists. Just as in the case of global warming, if you choose to believe, it affects the way you live your life, and if you choose not to believe, it affects your life in a different way. Refusing to make a decision is simply an irrational way of making a decision.

In last week’s post, I said that true faith isn’t about blind belief contrary to all the evidence. It’s about what you believe based on the evidence. However, there’s more to faith than that. Faith is about deciding what is true when you have time to consider all the relevant facts objectively, and then sticking with that truth during the tough times when the busy-ness of life and voices of the crowd and the heat of the moment urge you to abandon that truth.

Faith is something exercised by scientists when the rest of the world is telling them that their theories are wrong. Faith is something exercised by a child in a schoolground who stands up for what is right when all the other children want to do what is wrong. And faith is something exercised by a follower of Jesus when all around are saying that there is no God, and that only weak-minded people need the crutch of religion.

The Bible is a collection of accounts of the faith exercised by God’s servants, from Abraham through to the early New Testament believers. Many of these faith stories are summarised in Hebrews 11. In each case, the person of faith made a conscious rational decision to trust God, and then stuck with that decision when the going got tough and the immediate circumstances tempted them to abandon their trust.

Many people say that faith is something which takes over when there is no evidence. In olden times, people had no scientific explanation for how the sun moved across the sky or how the seasons worked, so they attributed those natural events to the gods. As scientific knowledge has advanced, the need for faith in the gods has receded, because everything can have a rational, scientific explanation. It is no longer good scientific practise to posit a “god” who fills in any gaps in science.

However, this is a misconstruction of the nature of faith. Faith isn’t something “religious” or irrational. It’s something that everyone exercises every day. Faith is simply what you believe based on the evidence. When you drive your car, you have faith that the petrol gauge correctly indicates that you have enough fuel in the tank. You have faith that the wheels won’t fall off. You have faith that the road won’t collapse. You don’t know these things for sure, but based on past experience and all the relevant facts, you have faith and you are happy to stake your life on that faith.

It’s the same thing with faith in God. True faith isn’t about blind belief contrary to all the evidence. It’s about trusting in God based on all the evidence. As the Bible says, the heavens declare the glory of God. Christians put their faith in God, and stake their lives on it, because they have experienced God’s faithfulness and blessing in their lives. To them it’s much more rational than believing that there is no God.

For many years people have been predicting the demise of religion in general and Christianity in particular. Voltaire, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud all thought that Christianity would be dead and buried long before now. Christianity is on the decline in Europe and Australia. According to the census figures the number of people claiming allegiance to a Christian church is declining by around 43 people per day in Australia.

However, even allowing for places where faith is declining, the number of people claiming to be Christians globally is growing by over 70,000 people per day. According to sociologist Christian Smith in the latest issue of Sociology of Religion, “The very internal logic of doing Christianity persistently produces events, interactions, and feelings in and among people compelling enough to keep the tradition flourishing despite many countervailing forces.”

In other words, Christian faith is something that seems to “work”. This doesn’t prove that faith in Jesus is “true”, but it couldn’t be “true” if it didn’t “work”. That’s about as far as sociology can take us. A problem with sociology is that it looks at issues only in human terms, not taking into account the work of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives.

Rodney Olsen’s The Journey blog has an interesting post entitled, Is that all there is? It’s about a conversation between Bowden McElroy and a Christian teenager who is at a bit of a loss for words when asked what being a Christian means in the here and now. The best that he can come up with is, If you pray for things, you can get stuff.

The problem is, I think that a lot of churches don’t really provide adequate answers to the question of what being a Christian means in the here and now. A normal Christian is typically someone who goes to church each Sunday, puts some money in the plate, takes some minor voluntary role such as usher or car parking attendant to help keep the church wheels turning, offers an ongoing critique of the job the pastor was doing in running the church, and lives the rest of his or her life in pretty much the same manner as anyone who wasn’t a Christian.

There really are very few people out there who model what it means to be a fully committed follower of Jesus in an affluent society. How many Christian adults invest all of their money in kingdom work, rather than just giving God a 10% tip or less? How many Christian adults spend all of their time on kingdom work, rather than just giving God an hour or two in a week of self-obsessed pursuits?

I visited Africa a few times before it occurred to me that I should try to do something more than just being a spectator. Just going and visiting people who are living in poverty, so that you can tell people about it back home, makes you feel righteous, but are you actually doing anything to make a difference, or are you just an unwanted onlooker deriving entertainment from viewing other people’s tragedy and debasement?

Although there are many good reasons to go on a missions trip, there are also many reasons not to go. The people you are visiting will be taken away from their normal work while you are there. Your lack of local knowledge will probably result in some damage, and there is no guarantee that the good you do will outweigh the damage. Your desire to have a good story to tell when returning home may result in unwarranted claims of successes.

However, I believe that there is a lot to be gained from a well-planned missions trip. Possible favourable outcomes include: leaving the hosts richer rather than poorer for the experience, accomplishing a project which you set out to do, enriching the worldviews and faith experiences of the team members, and establishing lasting cross-cultural friendships and faith partnerships.

An article published yesterday by Time contains details of writings of Mother Teresa indicating that she went through spiritual dryness – a failure to sense the presence of God – for most of the period of her ministry amongst the poor. Mother Teresa wanted the writings to be destroyed, but they were kept by the church, and have now been published.

In one meditation, Mother Teresa writes: I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?” In a letter she writes: …the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.

Spiritual dryness or running on empty is a common problem for workaholic Christian leaders. The normally prescribed treatments are taking a break from work, structuring a regular time into each day to pray and listen to God, and taking periodic retreats to seek God’s heart and to derive inspiration and encouragement from other Christian leaders. Faith is like a marriage relationship; every incident which happens along the way is an opportunity to grow closer together or further apart. But it seems that for Mother Teresa the relationship was dry in spite of all her efforts to make it work.