Friends
A Little Bit Incoherent? The Journey of Faith
07/29/07 17:19
So, there are many questions to be asked in life. Some important. Some not. Some I’m interested in. Some I’m not. What an intro! I better redeem this by writing something good.
So, as events of life conspire I am forced to ask a question: what sort of faith does God call us to? I suppose this is the sort of question that cannot be written ‘in general’. It must be fixedly pointed into a context, into a personality, into a person. Thus, what sort of faith is God calling me to?
This comes up from noting a good friend who understands faith in a very different way than I do. This vision of faith seems to me to be oriented around trying to hear what God is saying and then following that. Alone, this seems like a good policy for living a life of faith. But then there is a conjunctive assumption: that God is always speaking, that there is always, or nearly so, a path to which God is calling. This may well be the case for my friend, but I have come to find this sort of following of faith impossible for my own life, and even more, I find it undesirable.
It seems to me that the way of faith is a way of growing into a personality distinct but co-creative, co-redemptive and co-righteous with God. We are created to pursue creativity, to pursue redemption not only in our lives but helping others to heal and forgive and be forgiven, and to be righteous. These are co-activities with God, not only activities of God or activities on our own. It should be readily obvious that we cannot accomplish these on our own, but should it actually be the case that these are solely matters for God to be concerned with and shape in us? That is a tempting conclusion to come to, and it is enticing. At the very least though, I think we have to be receptive to God’s work. We have to give our yes (not always, but often), or else God will not work. That is why faith is critical to healing: we have to yell after Jesus sometimes and demand that he heal us. That is why the poor father comes to Jesus begging for belief: if he does not ask, he does not receive.
We are in this together. Not only us and God, but us and each other. The pursuit of God, the pursuit of faith is something that requires others. A dear friend, Jay, once told me, “A friend is someone who reminds you of the song of your heart when you have forgotten it.” We all forget our heart-song sometimes. We all need friends to help us on the way.
Donny reminded yesterday of the parable of the talents. The story says that God gives us some talents and then leaves. We are then left two options. We can use those talents as well as we can and try to multiply them. Or we can walk the path of fear. We can bury our talent, so at least we won’t lose the little we have. This path of fear is deeply condemned by Jesus. We are to live lives of risk, lives seeking to use our creativity in order to walk the paths of redemption and righteousness.
So what does it mean for me to walk the path of faith? A small bit of the answer is this: I need to live open to the moving of the Spirit, but also God desires for me to be a dependent, rational human fully engaged in the responsibility of my decisions (ethically and otherwise), by which I am also invited and able to do and be the work of the kingdom.
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