Faith and Trust

Something that is probably obvious to others has only recently become clear in my mind. Faith and trust are different. One is built on the other but they are not the same thing.

If I go to the dictionary for help I usually don’t find much help. Looking at Faith I found:

1. Confidence or trust in a person or thing:
2. Belief that is not based on proof:
3. Belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
4. Belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.:
5. A system of religious belief.”

Faith can’t be proved by the scientific method. Many things can’t but because it can’t be “proven” it is easily dismissed by many in the scientific community. For some odd reasons, some people of faith want to debate the issue with those who dismiss belief in God because it can’t be proven. That is a real waste of time because the two sides can’t be debated because there is not common ground or a set of shared values. Thus, in the end, each side is sure they won the debate because the opposition’s argument made no sense to them. Correctness and victory are in the eyes of the beholder. The victory of the “science guy” is widely held because science has become our modern religious faith system. Most educated within the humanist educational system just assume the scientific method is not to be denied.

Faith believes in things unseen and the un-seeable. The author of Hebrews put it like this. Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. (Hebrews 11:1-2 NIV) A person of faith believes in something one doesn’t see but we can often see the results of the existence of that which is unseen. The Bible mentions the wind. It moves about and we can’t see it but we can feel it on our faces and see the leaves on the trees being stirred. Another example of an unseen force is love. I can’t see love as a force but I have seen love at work and have felt the impact of love on my life.

To know God and have a relationship with God, one must have faith in God. God is not seen. When I share with non-believers that I have never seen God but have seen God at work, they tend to dismiss such talk as silly because their belief system has no room for God – no room for the unseen and unprovable. They can’t believe me because to do so would call for a complete recalibration of their core values. And that is way too difficult and too much work.

Much of what we read in scripture is about faith. We talk about faith. We seek to have more faith. But Hebrews tells us that faith is a part of the Christian’s Elementary education. Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so. (Hebrews 6:1-3 NIV) Faith is basic to all that Believers understand about God and the things of the Kingdom of God. It is one of the foundation blocks upon which we build. Faith is necessary to coming to know God and for growing spiritually.

Faith, practiced, is powerful. We see that in a couple of stories of faith recorded by Matthew. Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.” Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment. When Jesus entered the synagogue leader’s house and saw the noisy crowd and people playing pipes, he said, “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. News of this spread through all that region. As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” “Yes, Lord,” they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”; and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.” Matthew 9:20-31 (NIV)

Without trust, faith is fragile. Trust is built when faith is put to work and produces results. When one starts to experience the results of putting one’s faith in God one begins to trust God. For the mature Christian, faith is no longer an issue because, by living a life of faith, we have come to trust God.

When I think of faith and trust I think of my relationship with my wife, Nancy. Before I met her I had faith in love and that I would someday meet the love of my life. I couldn’t see love. I had not yet experienced loving someone in that way. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen that kind of relationship in action. But I had faith it could happen. All I had was that precarious faith in an unseen possibility. And then I met Nancy. And our relationship grew as we experienced each other and life together. As our relationship grew my trust grew. Do I have faith in Nancy? Sure. But more than that, I trust Nancy.

As long as we seek to prove or disprove God according to the scientific method we will fail. Instead I encourage you to experience God. God is not to be proven; the Living God is to be experienced through a vital and growing daily relationship. Trust me on this. J

Copyright © 2014, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Bill McConnell is Senior Minister at Lindenwood Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee and is a Church Transformation consultant and a Christian Leadership Coach. He is a frequent speaker at Church Transformation events. He can be contacted @ bill45053@gmail.com. Connect with him on Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/pages/William-T-McConnell/812462358785951 or on Twitter @bill45053.

Moving On

If one has lived more than a decade, one has suffered through some difficult times. With age comes experience and with experience comes wisdom. If you are like me, sometimes I wish I had had fewer opportunities to become wiser.

Perhaps your difficult time took shape as the loss of a valued friend; the death of a loved one; having to move to a new home far from where you had taken root. Perhaps someone whom you trusted and from whom you expected a certain behavior failed you and deeply wounded your spirit. If you have logged any mileage on this road we call life, you have suffered disappointments and have been a disappointment to others.

These experiences can and should have an impact on our lives. Occasionally things have happened in my life that caused me to think of a line from Chris Farley in the movie Tommy Boy – “Wow, that’s going to leave a mark.” Some experiences are so positive or so negative that they leave a mark. A big one for me happened my senior year of high school. Like many in high school, I had a high school sweetheart. We dated on and off for several years. I think it is no exaggeration to say that we were crazy about each other. But, we were young and the relationship was rocky and we broke up and went back together with some regularity. In the spring of our senior year we were during one of our “break up” modes. Or at least I thought we were. That is until I received the phone call and learned that she had run off to Tennessee and gotten married. That one left a mark. Ouch.

The question becomes; how do we process these experiences in ways that are helpful instead of harmful? How do we learn from our experiences without allowing them to limit our future or cause us to have a cynical view of life? Such experiences can tend to toughen our approach to life or they can just inform our approach to live. They can harden us or soften us. Such experiences can drive toward God or drive us away from God. Though we rarely understand it as such, it is a choice we make. Our life experiences, in and of themselves, has neither a positive or negative impact on our lives. What impact they have is a choice we make.

On the negative side, we can allow our lives to be limited by our past experiences. Such experiences may cause us to live in the fear of suffering from a reoccurrence. We don’t fully give our whole hearts in a relationship for fear of being hurt. We don’t take on new challenges for fear of falling and hurting ourselves or fear of looking foolish in front of others. We don’t trust anyone because someone failed to keep a trust in our past. We don’t speak up because we fear we will be belittled as we were in the past.

You possibly noticed a reoccurring pattern to this negative approach – Fear. Our past experiences can cause us to fear the future. Living in fear is not a Godly way of life. The most often repeated command from God is, “Fear not.” A God-filled, God-led life is a fearless life. One cannot possibly go where God is leading and one cannot possibly do what God is calling one to do if one is fearful.

There is an interested take on this subject in the New Testament. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14)

Here is what the author is saying to me. Keep your eyes on the goal. Keep moving ahead. Sure, learn from your past experiences, but don’t let them control you. Don’t let your past dictate your future. None of us have arrived. We are all still on the spiritual journey toward maturity. What has happened in your past, God can use for the good in your future. When you encounter a difficult time (or person or situation) don’t stop there. Keep moving. Keep your eyes on the goal. You’re not there yet.

So, if you are more than ten years old, you have had a disappointment or two in life. Perhaps it happened in and through the church. What did you expect? The church is populated by people – people much like you and me. But don’t let that stop you from moving into the future God has for you. Put the past in the past and move into the future. We need to do that as individuals and as a church.

God is already in our future. I am excited to join Him there. Let’s go!

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

An Astute Observation of the Obvious

One of the most insightful and interesting articles I have read in recent years appeared in the January 2010 edition of the Portland Monthly. In the article, Christopher Hitchens was interviewed by Marilyn Sewell, the recently retired minister of the First Unitarian Church of Portland. Sewell is a former teacher and psychotherapist and the author of numerous books, Sewell, over 17 years, grew Portland’s downtown Unitarian congregation into one of the largest in the United States. She describes herself as a liberal believer.

 

Mr. Hitchens described himself, among other things, as an atheist and has been identified as being a prominent exponent of the "new atheism" movement. He and fellow high profile contemporary atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett have often been referred to as "The Four Horsemen" and the "Unholy Trinity".  Hitchens is a secular humanist and anti-theist, and describes himself as a believer in the philosophical values of the Age of Enlightenment. His main argument is that since the concept of God or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. Christopher Hitchers’ 2007 book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything made him arguably the nation’s most notorious atheist.

I will quote just a segment of the interview. The interview, in its entirety, is worth a read or a listen.

Sewell: The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

Hitchens: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

Why does it take a non believer to tell us such an obvious truth? Why is it that we, the people who make up this thing we call the church, have such a difficult time defining what it means to be a Christian? I believe the problem is less theological and more sociological. It has more to do with the cultural moral “good” that drives our culture. It is the ultimate good of being open minded, accepting and acceptable that drives our religious and intellectual community to have such a fuzzy understanding of what it means to be a Christian. It is that, much more than our understanding of God, that drives us and, I believe, confuses us.

Mr. Hitchens has made what I would call an astute observation of the obvious. Christianity is founded on the belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, lived on this earth, died on a cross to pay the price for our sins and, on the third day, rose from the dead. Not believing in these things means you are not, “in any meaningful sense a Christian.” Instead of getting our shorts in a bunch, or entering into a long winded philosophical discussion, or calling him narrow-minded and stupid (Which he obviously isn’t.) perhaps our response should be “Duh, no kidding.”

Some of the basic beliefs of Buddhism are:

1. Buddha is our only Master.
2. We take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha.
3. We do not believe that this world is created and ruled by a God.

Frankly, I don’t believe those things: For whatever reason or reasons. I can’t say those are really good or bad things, I just don’t believe them. Thus, I can tell you, I am not a Buddhist. That was easy.

There are many things about Islam that are problematic for my belief system. These are just a few:

1. On the Last Day, resurrected humans and jinn will be judged by Allah according to their deeds. One's eternal destination depends on balance of good to bad deeds in life.
2. Warriors who die fighting in the cause of God are ushered immediately to God's presence.
3. "Enemies of Islam" are sentenced immediately to Hell upon death.

Since I don’t believe these things I would not even consider considering myself Islamic. Not a liberal Muslim or a conservative Muslim. Just not a Muslim.

I may consider myself to be a moral person; a good person; a nice person; a godly person. But since I reject some of the very basic tenets of different faith systems, I don’t consider myself to be a Buddhist or a Muslim. They don’t seem to mind and I don’t mind.

So, why is it, I wonder, that there are such a large number of people around the world who reject some of the very basic tenets of the Christian faith and yet insist on being labeled and accepted as Christian? Many of these people would be deeply offended by what I have written and would condemn me as being a narrow-minded fundamentalist.

I confess. I don’t get it. I don’t believe what people of other religions believe and I am not offended that they don’t accept me as a Buddhist or Muslim. I don’t think they should. Truth is, if they did accept me as a Muslim or a Buddhist, I would wonder what they were thinking.

My only guess as to why I have come to such conclusions is that I am a Christian who thinks too much like an atheist.

Copyright © 2010, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved