Becoming True People of Faith - Part I

Whenever the media or secular world mentions the Christian community, the term most often used is “people of faith.” Though the phrase appears to align with the Biblical text, the secular context of a “person of faith” is someone believing in a God never seen, never felt, nor ever tangibly experienced. This group’s “faith” is merely based on the hope that such a God exists. That might be because others have declared it so, or the scriptures assert it as so. And since the scriptures are claimed to be this God’s book, the Christian must blindly trust his God’s claims despite the supposedly growing historical and scientific evidence to the contrary.

“You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe.” Carl Sagan

The media or secular world might concede a slight bit further than atheists such as Sagan, accepting that perhaps these people of faith did at some point in their lives experience something “spiritual,” or according to science, “unexplainable.” That unexplainable spiritual (or more likely psychological) phenomenon is then called “God.” Just as another’s unexplainable phenomena might be personally claimed as an encounter with Buddha, or the Great Other, or Nature or some other metaphysical expression. Unfortunately, not only has the majority of the American Christian church surrendered itself to this secularized label of “faith,” it offers little objective evidence of anything to the contrary.

DISSECTING FAITH’S FAILURE

This may be in part due to the church’s overemphasis on a ‘personal’ relationship with God. Finke states, “Though religion is still a group phenomenon… the open market stresses personal conversion and faith. Once again, the religious decision is an individual decision set in the context of a religious market with a wide array of diversity… ”{1} The problem with an imbalanced focus on a personal encounter and relationship is that it entitles the supposed faith-oriented Christian to claim an internal transformation requiring little external evidence. Sadly, the church’s over emphasis on personal relationship may build congregations as Finke observed, but its ability to mask its objective results also fuels its supposed antagonists:

“This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.” “Hands that help are far better than lips that pray.” Robert Ingersoll

“An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated…” Justin Brown

Another factor may be the church’s disproportionate concentration on Christianity’s future promises. Driving on a California freeway in recent months, I passed a church marquee that read, “Jesus died to get you to Heaven.” Though this statement rings of some truth, wholly focusing on the distant concept of eternal salvation can keep the “person of faith” so fixated on the future that (once again) little visible change is displayed in the present. Apart, of course, from a healthy disdain for those without “faith” and a bitter disposition (or a hidden lust) toward the secular world’s pleasures. Interestingly, Jesus verbally asserted that eternal life did not begin with death, but with conversion. The Bible is clear that eternal life starts the moment one is truly saved. For those having experienced true eternal life conversion, the secularized faith label is not merely annulled; it is completely transformed, and, as I will soon show, to the betterment of society as a whole.

THE FAITH OF 1492

I shall illustrate this true Christian faith and its perceptible evidence through a more tangible example of ‘faith’ from the annals of history. In the year 1492, Columbus embarked on his famous maiden voyage to the New Land. His quest was in part fueled by the need to prove to both his critics and his financiers that the world was in fact round and not flat. Columbus may have been resolute in his round-world conviction as his writings appear to state. But it is probable that his onboard crew might not have fostered such devout belief. Fear of the unknown, and its potential doom, may have been easy to overcome while still safe on the mainland, trumped by the lure of untold riches or the cavalier danger-inspired rush of stepping into a great adventure.

But as the vessels set sail, the crews aboard the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria were forced to place considerable blind faith in the man leading them toward the end of the flat world. They had all seen and been navigated by maps clearly depicting in beautiful artistry where the flattened earth collided with cosmic oblivion. And now they were rapidly sailing towards one of these spots. Those having taken this blind faith journey must have been plagued with the itching fear that their ships would soon spill off the end of the flattened ocean, tumbling forever down into the empty blackness of space. It is likely such fear remained… right up until the moment the crew realized they had successfully passed any boundary signaling the end of the earth and eventually spotted the New Land in the far distance.

Still, once Columbus and his crew reached the New World intact, their return voyage required crossing the horizon line again. Did the crew require the same amount of faith for the return journey? Were the shipmates gripped with an identical panic? These questions are of course rhetorical; for what once required blind faith had, through actual and evidential experience, been proven as fact. It was through these new facts that the crew’s future actions – and ultimately, those of all humanity – would forever transpire.

TRUE CHRISTIAN FAITH

In the same manner, a true Christian’s faith is no longer relegated to merely the hope that God does in fact really exist and that the Christian’s belief system is a valid one. The evidence of that initial faith is crystallized with the first actual experience of God’s presence and voice. Not a metaphysical force or an idea – but a real and tangible encounter with a true and very real God. A personal relationship with the Creator of the universe is no more a strictly internal experience than a personal relationship with any dearly loved fellow human being. Were someone to inquire about my wife and I were to state, “That is strictly personal,” one might come to two possible conclusions. Either I have no wife, or I am far too self-aggrandizing and elitist to share our personal relationship with that other party. In either case, the one asking the question would no doubt wonder whether he even wanted to entertain a future relationship based on the illogicality of my response and a lack of external evidence. Such is the commendable nature of many of the arguments of the West’s rising collection of “pop-atheists.”

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” Richard Dawkins

But a true person of faith no longer clings to the shallow hope that his God might exist while still never having experienced His tangible presence or nature. Like Columbus’ crewmates, proven faith transcends hope. For a true Christian, faith is transformed. It is not based on the actuality of a now proven God, but in the assurance that the words this very real God has spoken – are possible. Not possible of being completed by God Himself, that becomes perpetually more evident as the relationship, and therefore the communication, grows. Instead it is faith to believe that God can do what He claims through humanity, His image, of which each person of faith is now a part (His children).

Because of mankind’s finiteness and frailty, this is where the fires of true faith must be continually stoked. The Biblical text states: “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” (Rom. 10:17) It describes a perpetual faith, an organic, growing faith that, at times, ebbs and flows. But not in its trust in the existence of God. Instead, it is a trust in the potential of His image: You and me. For this God moves most often through the faith of His image. While attempting to heal the poor, sick and lame during his ministry, the gospel text records a specific region that experienced little of Jesus’ supernatural manifestation. The reason? The Bible states in Mark 6:5-6 that He could do little healing in that town, because of their faith. It wasn’t a faith to believe that Jesus existed; He was right there among them. Instead, it was a faith to concede that He, as a man, could do what He claimed.

In addition, it is also a faith to believe that God will do what He has claimed in the future, when the tangible present seems to declare otherwise. True faith transcends linear time. God was unlocking a powerful paradigm when He declared that He knew the end from the beginning. The second time we watch a film in which impending doom seems inevitable, we aren’t as worried about the turnout. We now know the end from the beginning. This is a perfect picture of our time-transcendent God. In conversation with others who are worried about when God will do this or that, I tell them, “You don’t understand. To God it’s already done. You just haven’t reached that moment in the linear story yet.” True faith is in part the byproduct of a linear humanity attempting to synchronize with its infinite God and Creator.

OUR FAILURE AT TRUE FAITH

Though many of America’s mega-church buildings are filled to capacity on Sundays, and the Christian literature industry is a bumper crop business, little of the modern church ever experiences true, perpetual and organic faith – based on its lack of tangible societal evidence. Instead the church struggles year after aching year defending this secularized version of faith, still grappling with the actuality of the God they claim to serve. Granted, there are times when such a question appears to have merit, even among the most truly faithful. When tragedy, horror and unmerited misfortune strike individually or collectively, many respond by asking, “Where is this God?” But such an inquisition can only be offered when man has had no evidential examples of the glory of God prior to these tragedies.

So how is an impalpable God provable evidentially? How can mankind see the tangible glory of an invisible God? To answer these questions is to quote Iraneaus: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” Herein lies the church’s tragedy: It has relegated what should be a fully alive Christianity into merely the secularized version of the term “faith.” Because people of faith fail to show fully alive evidence of the glory of God through their own lives, the fully alive God is Himself marginalized, claimed as metaphysically anemic, and relegated to merely being another affiliate of the pluralistic pantheon of “faith” gods. This is where the church has both failed itself and the society it is commanded to love and protect. Because we can use Columbus’ return to the mainland to uncover how True Christians can and must show tangible evidence of a true and real God…

[go to part II]

{1} Roger Finke, “Religious Deregulation: Origins and Consequences,” Journal of Church and State 32 (Summer 1990): 609-25, quotation 625