Fear not: there's a reason to take heart

An often-used phrase in the Bible is "Fear not!" On various occasions it is spoken by God or by one of his messengers. Reading the Nativity accounts in the Gospel of Luke, I see "Fear not" used several times. It is never used as a raw command; there is always a reason given assure the hearer and to renew confidence. 

As Luke records the events surrounding Jesus' birth, he records three times when the angels announcement begins, "Fear not": 

• To Zechariah: "Fear not, Zechariah: for your prayer has been heard." (Luke 1:13)
  The angel continues to announce that he and his wife will have a son, John. 
  
  
• To Mary: "Fear not, Mary, for you have found favor with God." (Luke 1:30)
  The angel continues to announce that she will have a son. 
  
  
• To the shepherds: "Fear not, for I bring you good news of great joy, which shall be for all people. For to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." (Luke 2:10-11)

Today I am thinking mainly of Zechariah's encounter with the angel. 

Zechariah's news would be near and dear to anyone who has offered prayers and waited on the Lord: "Your prayer has been heard." When Zechariah heard the angel's message -- of which I've only included the very start -- Zechariah's answer was in the same neighborhood as "Took you long enough" or "Aren't you a little late, considering our ages?" It is easy to feel frustrated or even cynical when a prayer's answer is delayed, and seems to have been ignored or denied. Still, regardless of outward appearances, God had heard, had loved him, had listened to him -- and even considered it right to grant the request. Why had God waited to fulfill Zechariah's prayer? Was He waiting for Mary to grow up so that John and Jesus would be close in age? Was He waiting for the years of the prophet Daniel to be fulfilled? Was He waiting for Zechariah's priestly division to take its turn at the Temple, so that Zechariah could learn of God's gift as Zechariah offered the incense? We do not know the answer, and this side of heaven we have no way to know the answer. But looking back, it is easier to give God the benefit of the doubt that the timing was right, despite how hopeless things must have looked to Zechariah during the long years he may have waited. That's a thing I would do well to remember when I consider unanswered prayers. It may be that the timing matters for reasons I cannot yet see. 

Advent 3: It's the waiting that gets us

God promised Abraham a son. And he couldn't wait! So he had a son, Ishmael, by his servant-woman Hagar. The son of the promise, Isaac, came later. That impatience has complicated the history of the lands inhabited by their descendants for millennia.

In the desert, God promised to lead the Israelites, and Moses went up the holy mountain for 40 days. The Israelites couldn't wait. And so they made a golden calf as an idol.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples had a different kind of trouble waiting: While Jesus went to pray, they fell asleep. 

As human beings, patience is not our strong suit. When God asks us to watch and wait, we either don't watch, or we don't wait. Sometimes we try to force a miracle to happen on our own terms and our own deadline. Sometimes, when something important is happening right in front of our eyes, we don't realize and aren't paying attention.

Part of Advent is waiting -- where we remember not just Jesus' original arrival in our world, but look forward to his return. Until then we have been asked to watch and wait, among our other tasks. The Gospel of Matthew records Jesus teaching parables that I think of as the Parables of the Long Absence: where a whole collection of sayings and parables drive home the point that the wait will be so long that the wait itself becomes a problem (Matthew 24:44-25:30). We can't say he didn't warn us. 

The wait is a temptation to force our own solutions, or find other solutions, or give up our expectations. That's what people do, when we are asked to wait a long time. But even when we try to force a solution, God still has his own. After Abraham had Ishmael, he still had Isaac. After the golden calf was turned to dust, God still led his people, still sealed his covenant with Israel. Those who have kept their expectations in God's promises have seen God prove himself faithful.

The righteous will live by faith

Today is remembered as Reformation Day in some Christian circles: the day on which Martin Luther challenged the Roman Catholic church on selling indulgences, among other matters, and advocated the priority of faith. I mean "priority" in more than one of its meanings, so to be clear: both the importance of faith, and the fact that faith comes before the resulting works.

Jesus taught that evil comes from the heart: immorality, theft, adultery, murder, and such begin as internal matters. Before there are works of evil, there are thoughts and desires of evil. Consider the much-neglected commandments against coveting: you shall not covet your neighbor's property, or his wife, or his workers, or anything pertaining to our neighbor. Coveting property leads to theft. Coveting someone's spouse leads to adultery. In some cases, it has been known to lead to murder. The seeds of the evil to come were planted as coveting. The deeds followed from thoughts and desires that were encouraged. 

And the righteous live by faith. It begins as an internal matter. Long before Mother Theresa was a saint, she learned to value compassion and humility -- to see other people through the eyes of faith, as valuable in God's sight. Long before Abraham was anyone's father, he learned faith: to trust that God could keep a promise to bring offspring even from an old man such as he was. Long before we step out in faith, before we find our own calling, we learn the thoughts and desires of the heart that come from faith. We learn holiness and compassion. We learn to trust God's thoughts more than our own. We learn the wisdom of both righteousness and forgiveness. We learn the immeasurable importance of loving our neighbors. We learn what it means to desire mercy rather than sacrifice. It starts as small as a mustard seed, and grows until it is a refuge or sanctuary in this world. 

Faith, hope, and love are closely intertwined. It is hard to have one without having all three. God's love creates our faith. Our faith lives out God's love.

Faith: A virtue that moves us

The gospel readings in church these last two weeks have made a serious contrast: Last week's reading told about Jairus' daughter and the unnamed woman who touched Jesus' cloak; this week's reading told about the unbelief of the people in Jesus' hometown of Nazareth. 

"Your faith has made you well." -- I've often privately in my heart found fault with that line of thinking: It was the power and benevolence of God that made her well! But Jairus benefited from it because he acted on his belief in it. The unnamed woman who touched his cloak benefited from it because she acted on her belief in it. Few in Nazareth did the same. So there is a real sense in which faith was a vital factor. It is true enough that God is not limited by our own thoughts; however, my relationship with God may be limited by my thoughts about God. 

The last few years I have been more like the hometown crowd in Nazareth. (Has the church become like the hometown crowd in Nazareth -- too accustomed to Jesus to see what is happening?) I find myself wondering about the line between the temptation of cynicism and whether it verges on maligning God's character. 

May I see Jesus again through the eyes of those who are not over-familiar.

Is doubt the opposite of faith?

You of little faith, why did you doubt? - Jesus (Mark 14:31)

Over the last year or so I have seen a number of pieces around the Christian blogosphere singing the praises of doubt and raising the question, "Is doubt really the opposite of faith?" I am at times amazed at how we humans so often put our cleverness to work at the job of kidding ourselves. In a word: Yes. Doubt is the opposite of faith. In the Bible, doubt and faith are used as opposites repeatedly. My copy of Roget's thesaurus has an entry on "doubt"; it lists "belief" as the sole entry for the antonym.

I think the people who go for this line of argument -- that doubt is an intrinsically good thing and not actually the opposite of faith -- have in their minds defined doubt as the opposite not of faith but of fundamentalism, and have decided that the distasteful part of fundamentalism is rooted in certainty or the absence of doubt. Not only is this a careless analysis, but one that will eventually paint the non-fundamentalists into a corner until we define our terms better, as I will explain in a moment.

"Fundamentalism" has devolved in meaning into something other than its original meaning, and I use the word not in its original sense of "holding onto the basics" but in the sense meant by those advocating the benefits of "doubt" in the faith/doubt conversation. In that sense, "fundamentalism" is taken to mean "the type of 'faith' which excludes questions as to why the faith is legitimate, typically resting solely on a priori assumptions which, when questioned, evoke either a display of rage or a show of disdain for whether an answer exists". In this sense, the "fundamentalism" attacked by these critics is not, properly speaking, simply faith, or simply certainty. It is faith held on grounds not known to be faithful, certainty about that which is not certain.

I think these more misguided parts of what is being called "fundamentalism" have their root in a misdefinition of "faith", which I've discussed before at greater length than I'll do here. The misdefinition of "faith" as "belief in the absence of knowledge" has done much harm; certain Christian groups even consider "faith" as dependent on its object being unknown and always a "leap of faith" -- said leap being their contribution to their own salvation, and the merit of their "faith" then depending on the assumption that it was a leap: i.e., the idea that their belief is not actually supported has then become a tenet of their faith and, paradoxically, the proof of their merit. The proper evaluation is not "faith is good and doubt is bad"; it depends on the level of support.

All of this might have gone unsaid on my blog for the moment except for the misguided praise of doubt that I've heard around. When confronted with a belief about something, "how do you know?" is a reasonable question. For example, "How do you know Jesus even existed?" is a reasonable question; "There are four same-century biographies, more than I'm aware of for anyone else of that era" is a reasonable answer. If there is no reasonable answer, then belief in a thing is unreasonable; however, if there is an overwhelmingly probable rational answer and no solid reason for doubt, then in that case it is doubt which is irrational.

Here is the point: the level of certainty/faith and level of uncertainty/doubt should match the level of support. To believe something for which there is no support is unwarranted faith, even if what is believed is supposedly an article of faith. And here's the flip-side: to disbelieve something for which there is solid support is unwarranted unbelief, or to rephrase, unwarranted doubt. If there is such a thing as unwarranted belief, it follows that there is such a thing as unwarranted doubt. Many people consider the 9/11 "Truthers" to be an example of this type of unwarranted doubt. In case anyone is unfamiliar with the 9/11 "Truthers": they do not believe that Middle Eastern terrorists were actually behind the 9/11/2001 attacks on the U.S. Most people would consider that to be unwarranted unbelief in the involvement of terrorists. Another example might be those who believe the Elvis sightings, which again most people would consider unwarranted unbelief in the reports of his death and burial.

Please note that unwarranted belief in one thing almost always goes hand-in-hand with unwarranted unbelief in another, and vice versa. For example, someone with unwarranted doubt in the terrorist connection with 9/11 is likely to have unwarranted belief in the complicity of the U.S. government in attacking its own citizens. My point here is that doubt can be every bit as irrational as faith. The idea that "doubt is good and faith is bad" is wrong-headed; that's the same mistake as the fundamentalists make, just in the opposite direction. If we are to be rational, doubt and faith should both depend on the level of support.

For example: How sure am I that Jesus existed? 100% (as I've already mentioned my reasons for this above). How sure am I that Paul's contemporaries thought Paul had the authority to pronounce church policy for all times and places? Oh, count that under 50%, and that based on how decisions were reached at the council of Jerusalem. And so forth. I'm not saying anyone has to match my numbers, I'm saying that there is such a thing as rational belief as well as rational doubt; that there are times when doubt is more rational than belief and also times when belief is more rational than doubt, and finally as we saw in the case of the "Truthers" there are times when faith in a thing is irrational (e.g. believing the U.S. government conspired to kill thousands of its citizens to frame the terrorists who happened to be aboard) and times when doubt is irrational (e.g. doubting the involvement of terrorists in the 9/11 events).

Certainty is not inherently arrogant or misguided as is now often charged (though people in an arrogant mindframe may be more likely to make mistakes in determining whether their beliefs and unbeliefs are warranted by being culpably condescending towards other people). Certainty may or may not be warranted, depending on the specifics of each thing being considered. If certainty is not warranted then in that case it is misguided. However, if certainty is warranted, in that case it is doubt which is misguided.

Do Christians sell the faith short? Part 2: is "faith" defined as "the evidence of things not seen"?

This post continues the excellent conversation Dr. Pursiful started this past week. I mentioned that since God raised Christ from the dead, therefore we know God exists. Dr. Pursiful picks up with the most common response that I hear when I mention it:

More importantly, if that were the case then I’m no longer sure what faith is. It certainly isn’t “the evidence of things not seen” anymore if clear-cut evidence existed right in front of all our eyes.

Exactly: we do, in fact, have radically different definitions of faith. Faith, I would submit to you, most commonly means trust. Consider something Jesus said at the Last Supper, in two different translations:

Ye believe in God; believe also in me. (AV)
Trust in God; trust also in me. (NIV)(John 14:1)

When he is talking to people face to face, what on earth does it mean for someone to be called to have faith in him or believe in him? Think about it: if faith is defined as the evidence of things not seen, then how in the world can Jesus be discussing faith in him with people who see him face to face? But he is not asking people to believe he exists or some set of theological propositions; he is asking people to believe he is trustworthy. "Faith" is used to mean "trust" very often in the New Testament.

Consider this: the "Faith Hall of Fame" in Hebrews 11 also uses "faith" to mean "trust":

By faith Abraham, even though he was past age -- and Sarah herself was barren -- was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who made the promise. (Hebrews 11:11)

Here "faith" means "figuring that God will keep his word." Our faith, then, is our confidence in God, which includes confidence that he will keep his promises. That is how faith comes from hearing the word of Christ, as Paul said to the Romans: it is through hearing of Christ that we know God is faithful and trustworthy. When someone shows us that God is trustworthy, we trust him. That is faith. That is also how faith is "evidence of things not seen": if we trust someone, then their word is good enough for us. It's as if, at work, some Employee of the Month type said they'd get the job done; everyone would take it for granted from there -- when dealing with someone who keeps his word, that word is all we need. Replay in your mind the conversation (from a distance) between Jesus and the Roman centurion: "I say to someone 'do this' and he does it", and Jesus said "I have not found such faith in all of Israel." Faith, again, is shown as figuring that someone is trustworthy.

For the record, I believe that "the evidence of things not seen" was never intended as a definition of faith and is not a definition of faith at all; I believe it is a description of how faith behaves when all we have is a promise of things not seen. When all we have is a promise of things not seen, then "faith" (the trust in the one who made the promise) is what takes effect. However, if "the evidence of things not seen" is faith, then Peter, James, and John didn't have "faith" in the resurrection since they had seen the risen Lord; neither did they have "faith" in Christ since they had seen Christ. If "faith" is based on non-evidence, then the thousands of people who personally saw Jesus perform miracles did not have "faith" in Christ as such, though we might suppose they had "faith" that Christ would return.

By now I am hoping I have made the point: I do not believe that "the evidence of things not seen" was ever intended as a definition of faith, and I believe it leads us to problems interpreting the words of Christ and the words of the apostles -- not to mention some problems in theology -- if we take it as a definition of faith rather than a description.

Why do I discuss this under the heading of selling the faith short? Because that definition of "faith" is then only meaningful if it occurs with a lack of evidence, absence of evidence, or even contrary to evidence. Over the years I have even heard a few people -- though not Dr. Pursiful -- discuss "faith" as if it were their own merit or decision or contribution towards salvation, as if they got bonus points for a "leap of faith" -- so that their own faith was significant only if Christianity were not credible. And so certain Christians reliably proclaim that Christianity is not credible on its own, so that their "faith" (of that sort) is then meaningful in that way. That kind of message I find directly opposed to the message that I would send and I believe the New Testament sends: that Christianity is credible, and that God has shown himself in Christ, and that faith -- i.e. trust in God -- comes from hearing what Christ has done.

The different places you get from defining a single word differently! But then again, "faith" was always an important word.

My life on her faith. -- Othello.

Righteous by faith: imputation and God's righteousness

Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. (Romans 4:3, among other places)

There is a theory of our righteousness before God that is called "imputed righteousness." That terminology comes from Romans 4 in the AV (King James) translation, where God "imputeth righteousness without works" (Romans 6:6 AV). How exactly we should understand that has become a matter of some discussion over the ages, and currently again in the latest round of atonement debates.

Peter Kirk recently wrote,

Meanwhile, the view that I am working towards is a rejection of the “Reformed” idea that Christians remain sinners in actual fact but are nevertheless, by a legal fiction, counted as righteous in Christ. (Emphasis added. H/T Henry Neufeld.)

"Imputed righteousness" is often described as -- or thought of as -- a legal fiction. The weight of the argument is sometimes even rested on the word "imputed" as if that word meant an inaccurate accounting, a bookkeeping entry without basis in fact. However, a study of that word shows that the normal meaning is making an accurate accounting, not an inaccurate accounting.

I wouldn't for a moment dispute that, on the bookkeeping analogy, God does some very generous bookkeeping in our favor. "Forgive us our debts" presents itself to my mind as the most obvious example. Still, it is not quite a perfect analogy for a view that imputation is a legal fiction, because forgiving our debts is not a legal fiction; once the debts are off the books they are gone for all intents and purposes.

The question becomes, then, when we are counted righteous by faith, whether this is a legal fiction (imputing against reality) or whether there is any reality to being righteous by faith, any real righteousness involved. A number of questions arise in light of Paul's teachings in Romans 4 and in light of some of the subsequent debates on the topic:

• Is faith righteous?
• Is being accounted righteous by faith a gift? Is it gracious?
• Is being counted righteous by faith merited or unmerited?
• Do we merit the attainment of eternal life?
• Are we righteous in and of ourselves?

The following are my thoughts on this.

There is no such thing as being righteous "in and of ourselves." That is the mistake of Eden, seeking a right status in and of ourselves instead of with God. Righteousness then primarily means being right with God. As I mentioned in a previous post, the pivotal event in humanity's fall from grace was distrusting God. Righteousness before God is trusting God, and from trusting God it follows that we will trust his ways and keep his word.

So I would argue that faith is righteous, not by legal fiction but by the inherent nature of things. This leads straight to the question of whether faith should be credited to us as if it were merit on our part. If we take this same view of faith -- not changing to another view of faith but maintaining the same view of faith as trusting God to keep his word -- then such faith is not any credit to us, since we do not create such faith. Neither can anything create this kind of faith in God except for the knowledge of God's faithfulness. That is to say that God is faithful, and when we realize this it is called by the name "faith." Here "faith" cannot mean mere belief in the existence of God, which is a faith no greater than the demons possess. But we mean knowing God as trustworthy and faithful, as the one who keeps his promises and fulfills his covenant.

From this it follows that while faith merits nothing, it is still genuinely righteous. Through that faith we are again put right with God, not because faith was meritorious, but because God had reconciled the world to himself through Christ, not counting our sins against us, and we were implored to be reconciled to God. Faith is the human side of reconciliation with God: a confession of faith is a confession of God's faithfulness. Those who are genuinely righteous, then, are not preoccupied with merit of their own, since they trust God who justifies sinners. Instead, by faith, they seek after the things of God: to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God.

On this view, faith is genuinely righteous. But it is a misunderstanding of both faith and righteousness to think of faith as our faith as if it did not depend wholly on God's faithfulness, or to think of the righteousness of faith as our righteousness as if it consisted of something other than trust in God, the recognition of God's righteousness, God's mercy, and God's love.

We do not, then, merit the attainment of eternal life as if it were by works (however assisted) or as if it were an obligation of God's to us based on our works, that he must award eternal life simply to satisfy justice. Eternal life is a gift, one whose source is the overflowing generosity and joyful charity of God towards his children. No human act could ever earn eternal life. Nothing within our power could obligate God as a matter of justice to grant us an eternal reward. It is his faithfulness and love, it is his grace, which says to us that he will raise us from the dead. It is his everlasting love which is the source of his promise of everlasting life. It is his great mercy which speaks to us of the forgiveness of our sins, which are many and great.

Abraham was fully persuaded that what God promised, God was able to do. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Fallen by unbelief; Justified by faith

The atonement debates seem to be heating up again. Much of the ground has been thoroughly covered, but perhaps a few comments might be productive.

First, what is the nature of the fall? It is first of all a loss of faith in God, and the rest follows. The serpent is portrayed as preaching doubt in God: distrust of God's honesty, distrust of God's motives, distrust of God's word. The fall happens when we say in our doubt, "That's right; I can't trust God. He doesn't have our best interests at heart. He's trying to keep us down. He's trying to keep exaltation for himself." It is precisely a loss of faith -- a loss of trust in God -- that is the key moment of humanity's fall from grace. Grace, again, is a good relationship with God. When our actions advertise a distrust of God, when we say with our actions "God is not trustworthy", implicitly accusing God either of duplicity and treachery or of a lack of wisdom -- this inherently and by its very nature destroys the relationship of grace.

If the fall is a loss of faith -- loss of trust in God -- then is righteousness anything other than faith? Is righteousness anything other than confessing, "God is trustworthy"? Is a return to our right minds any more complicated than that realization that God is trustworthy, that he is for us and that his word can be trusted? God's faithfulness is the bedrock on which our faith stands. And our trust is not a blind leap or an irrational one, but a reliance on the reality of God's trustworthiness.

Abraham and the ancients were reckoned righteous by faith, because they considered that God who made the promise was faithful.

What about our faith? As guilty people, we dare not trust the judge. Does God have our best interests at heart? That question becomes, in our bad consciences, whether the judge has at heart the best interests of the guilty. We dare not risk it, so we hurry to accuse the judge of unfairness, to create a cosmic mistrial, to get ourselves acquitted not by innocence but by counter-accusations. That is unbelief. Notice how atheism -- supposedly a belief that there is no God -- actually in practice is much more preoccupied with accusing the judge of unfairness. The driving force of atheism is the variety of unbelief spoken of in the fall -- unbelief in God's fairness -- rather than unbelief in God's existence. The innocent may go before a judge boldly, but not the guilty.

Here is one place where Christ speaks plainly and clearly to us. It is in Christ that God has proved his faithfulness to us. In Christ, God has shown the world that he has our best interests at heart, even as guilty as we are. It is in seeing Christ and hearing the message of Christ that we trust God again.

And as we trust God again, we find that this is righteousness. This is faith; it comes through hearing the message of Christ. As we trust God again, we find that we are in a right relationship with him again, and that this is grace; it comes through Christ. The day of accusing God to justify ourselves is over.

Gifts of the Spirit: Faith, Hope, and Love

My pastor once said that Pentecost is the longest season of the church year because we live even now in the days of history that are celebrated by the season of Pentecost, and that all the days of history since the first Pentecost after Jesus' resurrection have been part of the great unfolding of Pentecost throughout the world.

Yes, my pastor in a liturgical church said this. Some of my Pentecostal (denomination) friends are sure we short-change the gifts of the Spirit because we do not speak in tongues. I have written before about the greatest gifts of the spirit: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest mission of the Spirit: going into the world proclaiming Christ. I have even written about how some people have faked having gifts of the Spirit -- especially tongues and translations. (As explained before, this is not a comment on whether such gifts continue; only a comment on the sad state of self-deceit in places where there is much performance-pressure to have one particular gift.)

But self-deceit goes much deeper than babbling in tongues in order to satisfy performance pressure. It comes close to home even for Christians who do not attend churches where spirituality is measured by private prayer languages. Sure, the lesser gifts of the Spirit such as tongues and translations can be faked easily. But what happens when the same spirit of self-deceit turns to the greater gifts? What happens when people fake faith, hope, and love?

The gifts of the Spirit are not self-generated; they are gifts coming from outside, coming from the Spirit of God, not from the will of man. So as soon as we try to manufacture from inside us faith, or hope, or love, we have made a counterfeit. And few attest their own faith, hope, and love so stridently as those who seem to be trying to convince themselves. Someone who is deeply faithful does not spend much time worrying whether she is deeply faithful; she has other things on her mind. Someone who is deeply hopeful does not spend much time trying to remind himself that nothing can keep a good man down and things will get better: he knows that God's goodness does not promise that, so his hope does not depend on circumstance. Being perky can be a tiresome and shallow substitute for having something to be glad about. Those who are loving focus more attention on their beloved than on themselves. Someone who is constantly self-monitoring to see how faith, hope, and love are growing are almost sure to disrupt their growth by constantly turning inwards, away from the source of these gifts.

The way faith grows is by looking at the cross of Christ where we see that God is faithful, where we see God with us. The way hope grows is by looking at Christ's empty tomb and hearing Christ's promise that he will also raise us up from our own tombs at the last day. Hope grows also by hearing Christ speak those words of forgiveness, knowing there is healing and restoration for our souls. The way love grows is by looking at him who loves us and treasuring these things in our hearts.