For more than six months, we’ve been studying the topic of faith, looking for definitions of it. Where does faith come from? What are its sources? What is the quantity and the quality of faith in terms of how it’s to be utilized? Some weeks we’ve almost despaired, wondering if faith exists at all. Several times along the way, we have toyed with the idea that perhaps we might need a complete revamp of what faith is. After last week’s class, it occurred to me, in a very clear way, that we do indeed need a major paradigm shift, a new way of seeing faith, a new way of teaching faith, a new way of living faith.
For the most part, we have always seen faith through the eyes of outcome, through the eyes of end result, through the eyes of what is going to happen. Moreover, we have linked that outcome to something about ourselves—What is our standing before God? What is our faith?—and we’ve clung to the notion that since a mustard seed of faith could move a mountain, then if the mountain doesn’t move, we must not have even a mustard seed of faith. We think: “God clearly can’t do great things for me, because I’m a man of little faith. I therefore need more faith, I need to grow more faith, if I wish to see God’s blessing in my life.”
Today, I’d like to propose that this concept is not only wrong, it is exactly the opposite of real faith. It is what I’m going to call anti-faith. The idea that my beliefs, my actions, my faith could somehow leverage the power of the God of the universe on my behalf for my benefit is not faith. It is, I believe, anti-faith. Hebrews says this about the origin and the outcome of faith:
Therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses [the people of the “Hall of Faith” described in Hebrews 11] surrounding us, let’s rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with endurance the race that is set before us, [this is the important part:] looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)
it could not be more clear: If God is the author and the finisher of our faith, then the outcome, the conclusion, is dependent upon God and not upon myself. This is the first paradigm shift we need to make. We do not control the outcome of our faith. God is not only the author of our faith but is also the outcome generator of our faith. However our faith turns out, it’s God’s plan, it’s God’s faith, it’s God’s program. Whether we have great faith or little faith or no faith, the outcome is God’s, not ours. We are in God’s service, he is not in our service. Think of it this way: Would you rather serve a God that does what you want, or serve a God that does what is best for you?
Faith that seeks to control God is anti-faith. True faith is faith that lets God control you. True faith is leaving it up to God and letting God be God. It’s a sobering reality that the very thing we think is faith, the leveraging of our mustard seed somehow for our advantage, is actually anti-faith. True faith eliminates the temptation to control God. Anti-faith tries to control God with our prayers, with our piety, and with our faith.
It’s no wonder that we’re so often disappointed with our faith. We’re expecting outcomes. True faith promises something entirely different. What do we do then with our mustard seeds, with our prayers, and our anointings and our expectations? Can we ask God and expect outcomes? Isn’t that what we’ve been promised? The truth is that yes, we have been promised outcomes. But this is the paradigm shift: The outcomes are God’s outcomes, not ours. Those outcomes are not fake outcomes. They’re not ethereal, they’re specific, personal and real. Philippians says:
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and pleading with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)
Here is the outcome spelled out. Notice that the end product from our prayers and our faith and our expectation is peace. Peace is what you get; not provision, not protection, not prosperity, but peace. Jesus elaborates:
Peace I leave you, My peace I give you; not as the world gives, do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, nor fearful. (John 14:27)
“My peace I give unto you, not worldly peace,” he says, “not finite peace, but heavenly peace.” And what does this peace bring? It brings freedom from fear. True faith gives you peace and casts out fear. The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is not despair. And the opposite of faith is not distress. The opposite of faith is fear. This is something that Carolyn said many weeks ago: True faith casts out fear and gives peace, regardless of the worldly outcome, regardless of what happens in this world’s reality. Faith promises—and it delivers—peace.
I was thinking about my brother again the other day. Most of you know he died a few months ago. I went to his anointing following the instructions of James 5 which says if you want healing, pray for it, go for the elders to come together for an anointing and so forth. He told me: “I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to leave my family alone.” His mustard seed had already been answered. He was serenely peaceful. He had no fear whatsoever. Myself, I brought my mustard seed of faith too, but I brought it with expectations for healing, for restoration, for renewed life. I left with disappointment and fear. I was relying on what I now see as anti-faith. He was relying on true faith. I had fear. He had peace.
As I’ve thought and rethought about the subjects of our week’s discussions, I’ve come to the conclusion that even in the great stories of faith in Hebrews 11—the stories of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Gideon, Daniel, and others—the common element is that they go from fear to freedom. They go from dis-ease to ease, from predicament to peace. The metaphoric mountains they faced, the fears that they all had, were all dissolved in peace. Abraham leaves his home to go to a place he doesn’t know anything about. Not knowing where he’s going, his fear of leaving home is arrested by the peace that his offspring will become a great nation. Jacob confronts his brother Esau with great fear, but wrestles with God and comes to a peace with himself. Noah confronts the flood and Moses stands before the Red Sea, being closed in by the Egyptians… situations fraught with fear, but all with the outcome of peace. Gideon becomes at peace with a mere 300-man army. Daniel finds peace inside a lions den. The Hebrew worthies are at peace in a fiery furnace.
Not knowing the outcome, all of these people found peace. Job too, caught in the unseen struggle between good and evil, plying God with questions that he can’t get any answers to comes eventually to understand and to live in a quality of peace. He has the true outcome of faith, which is freedom from fear and eternal peace.
All these stories of faith begin with fear with anxiety with an uncertain future. Their stories are our stories, we all face life in the same way, uncertain and fearful. Faith brings us peace: “Let not your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid.” The stories of faith are about how they finish, not how they start. The faith is about God and what he does. The start is about us and what we expect. Our expectations end in fear, God’s outcome ends in peace.
We see this illustrated in the disciples in the boat on a stormy Sea of Galilee. The metaphorical seas of life are rough and unpredictable. We live in fear that our frail human boat will capsize. God seems always asleep, unconscious to our needs, very far away. To our cry of help, he responds, “Peace! Be still.” True faith ends in peace regardless of the worldly outcome. Anti-faith has expectations, conditions, and has as its end product fear. Great faith looks the turbulence of life in the eye and feels peace. Little faith sees the storms of life and feels fear.
So this is what I’ve learned in our more than six months of discussions of faith: That true faith ends in peace and anti-faith ends in fear. It is remarkable indeed. What we’ve always sold as faith is in fact anti-faith. The opposite of faith is fear. True faith spawns peace. Fear is ever present with anti-faith. Peace is the outcome always expressed when true faith is seen. There is nothing left unanswered. Nothing left undone. Nothing left uncertain. In the end, faith is about peace and freedom from fear.
Donald: I think you’re right on. We have reversed what faith is. We tend to think it’s about outcomes. I guess I’m still perplexed as to what the purpose of prayer is. If we can say “Thy will be done” and then go on with our prayers, then that concurs with what I think you’re saying.
David: I agree that was a remarkable summary by Don and I too absolutely agree with it. To me, it’s pure Daoism—acceptance of the Way. The sage in Daoism and in Chinese philosophy generally is someone who simply achieves a level of peace. It’s not someone who gets rich or who gets cured of some disease. It’s someone simply who achieves a level of peace. And with that comes some kind of understanding of the world. But I guess until you get there, you cannot describe that understanding. But faith is there and it’s only a matter of being on or off. It may be in different strengths, perhaps—the Bible says we will be given “a measure” and that I guess, could be a different measure for everyone—but everybody has it. Everybody has faith. So in that sense, I think it’s on or off.
The main question in my mind is: Has religion, especially the Christian religion, been teaching anti-faith all these years?
Anonymous: Yes. Maybe it’s not Christians as a whole, as a religion, or as churches and denominations, who did that. It’s probably mostly individual belief. Even we who read our Bible and know it pretty well still came to this misunderstanding of what faith is and we practice it in the wrong way. I would not blame my church or my religion.
It’s ironic, almost funny, how I always recognize the truth, the real faith, yet practice the wrong one. I don’t know how that happens. You might say that this is the influence of church or religion on people. Maybe. I don’t know. But I always realized, even from my own experiences, that to give God control over everything in my life is faith and that peace is the real outcome because I have truly experienced it. After all the storms I went through, peace always came at the end. Always.
Praise God for all the experiences that we go through in our lives, because every one gets us closer to the right explanation, closer to God, closer to understanding his ways rather than ours. So I see it more and more clearly as the days go by in my life. When I started going with God, back in the ’70s when my brother passed away, and without understanding anything about faith or the Bible, I had not been walking with God at all, except for going to church on Sunday. I was crying, I knelt, I cried, I asked God for healing for my brother, who died of cancer as well. But after that, things seemed to be just dissipating, going away.
I didn’t think about it again until more problems came into my life with my marriage, and my faith started to feel the need, or maybe I should say I started to feel the need, for a stronger power or something in my life to take care of these problems. And at just the right time, I came to know the Seventh Day Adventist Church and the pastor started visiting me. It was when I was separated from my husband. So thank God! It shows me that he’s the author and the finisher of my faith. That is very, very true. I learned how to get from fear to peace from my own experiences years ago.
So we’re growing. Thank God for all the hard times we went through because the outcome is truly good. And that’s God’s work in our lives. That’s his job—to bring us closer and closer and closer to him as we live. Now we know why God disappoints us sometimes: It is to teach us something new.
C-J: I think that religion is very separate from the relationship. It’s really a codependent need for ritual and doctrine and leadership, whereas relationship with the divine is what we’ve really talked about here. You have to be able to see God’s hand in all things and accept that and find what the purpose was—how it’s going to bring you to a place of greater understanding. The peace is knowing the wisdom of the Divine.
But for me, religion has oftentimes been a stumbling block. We see the clay feet, the fallibility, of humankind. I agree religion is a good place to find guard rails—”Don’t go over there, that’s not a good place to be!” But I really think it has to be left in the hands of the Divine.
Reinhard: Faith is an inexhaustible topic with no end. Perhaps, like a discussion of salvation, a conclusion will only be reached in the next life. But together with my own experience, study, and observation, our discussion has consolidated my firm faith in God. It has strengthened my personal conviction and given me greater understanding of how God really is involved in our lives, as long as we put him and his will first in everything—in every decision, in every action—we undertake.
Much of life is routine and we don’t consult God on everything, but whenever we face hard decisions about our lives, our health… when we come to a fork in the road and we have to take one path or the other, the decision we make may be fateful. It can be beneficial or disastrous. But when we put every step of the way in God’s hand—every day, in every moment—then we can also feel him in ourselves, in our inner being, close to us, and we find ourselves talking to him all the time. That’s when—and where—our faith is alive and well and at its best.
Donald: The concept we are discussing is so foreign to the way we have thought about our spiritual journey. I know I will have to remind myself and consider it as I make my way through life. It’s almost like putting on glasses or a filter, because it’s so foreign to the way we’ve been seeing. I don’t think this is a minor concept. I think it’s a major concept.
I would have to remind myself frequently, because I think that right or wrong, religion has really presented anti-faith as the way our faith operates. I was also thinking about Christ and pieces of Scripture that set us up with expectations, such as you just need to reach out and touch God’s garment to be healed. I don’t know what to do with some of the examples in the Bible about with expectations of praying or trying to reach out and obtain what God has to offer, to better myself.
David: I think that’s key. It’s where we need to look for the next step. It comes back to the contention that if we treat the Bible and the stories in it not as pragmatic lessons to benefit us in this life but as spiritual lessons to benefit us in the next, then the Bible is just as valid as it has ever been. We’ve simply been reading it wrong.
The “peace” that we’re talking about is spiritual peace. It is not the peace that comes when your cancer is cured. It’s the peace that comes when you accept that the terminal cancer is what it is, that God is being God.
I don’t think it invalidates the Bible at all, I simply think it invalidates so many of the perspectives we’ve developed because of our natural human tendency to want immediate changes in our mortal lives. We latch on to those Bible stories and turn them into physical change agents when that’s not really their intent. Their intent is to serve as spiritual change agents.
C-J: I believe in divine intervention, as in the case of the woman who reached out and touched the hem of the garment. There are times when, for really no conscious reason, we feel compelled to do something by faith, and we receive because we obeyed. That doesn’t happen very often but I have had that experience where a light goes on and I know exactly what will be. People struggle to have an understanding of blind faith, that it’s God’s dominion, that we’re just a piece of paint on a canvas, a thread in a tapestry. But sometimes, that thread is very important to be at a certain place in time as a witness of God’s presence.
Anonymous: With this new perception of faith, how do we see it in light of the definition of faith as “the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” How do these two relate to one another? Especially the first part, which maybe I’m not understanding correctly.
David: To me things hoped for is simply the salvation. You hope for everlasting life.
Anonymous: That’s what I always thought. So what about our earthly life? I seem to be contradicting myself. Definitely, it’s for a spiritual thing, no doubt. But because we have faith in the outcome of God’s will, how does that relate to things hoped for? If somebody doesn’t know about eternal life, would their lack of faith deny them eternal life?
Donald: If you’ve ever worn polarized sunglasses, they do literally change your vision. This isn’t a minor thing. If you take another pair of polarizing lenses and pivot them in front of the ones you have on, it will go black. I feel weak in taking on such a strong position. I would want somebody that understand optics, somebody that understands theology to decide if this Is really good thinking.
Don: I’m perfectly prepared to say it may not be.
Donald: It’s such a pivot from the way we think on a regular basis that I’d love to hear a theologian’s response.
David: I think we all want to look externally, we want somebody we think is smarter, somebody who seems closer to God, to tell us what the answer is. But really we have to look inside. The only place to look is inside. There is nobody closer to God than you. There is nowhere else to go but inside. That’s where God is. And that will give you the answer.
C-J: That’s what I meant when I said the church and spiritual leaders can be a stumbling block—all that ritual, all that ceremony, all that interpretation of what this means, really is a distraction. You can use prayer, meditation, quieting the mind and so on to get into that place of oneness with the Divine Consciousness. And that’s when we have this understanding. There are no words. There’s just this presence, this collective consciousness of the Divine, and all is well. I don’t have to understand. I just know it’ll be okay. There’s such a comfort in that.
I’ve lived long enough to realize that when I strive, I have no peace, yet I feel I have to do it. It’s not until I get to the point where I get so frustrated and say, “What happens is going to happen” that I see the divine operation, I see the metaphorical hand. And when I let go and let God be God there is this perfection. All the ripples had to happen at a certain time in a certain way, everybody had to show up. But I think it’s very hard for us. It’s our nature to want to be in control. And we lose.
Don: I want to make it clear that nothing I’ve said precludes God from doing whatever God wants to do. If he wants to heal the lady reaching out her hand to touch the hem of his garment, he can heal her. And the notion of hoping for healing is not anti-faith. I’m sure my brother hoped for healing, but he was at peace with whatever happened. That’s the difference. The difference is in the expectation, the difference is in measuring the outcome, the difference is in figuring out what it is my outcome, what is going to influence how I feel about God versus what God has as his outcome.
God can do what he wants. He heals people, he protects Daniel in the lion’s den, but as Hebrews talks about at the end, some people are sawed in half. It’s God’s prerogative. He’s in control of what’s going on. It doesn’t mean we can’t hope for healing and we can’t pray for healing. It just means that there’s something about true faith which, once we accept it, leaves it in God’s hands. And that, I think, is the the part which is difficult, at least for me.
Jeff: I completely agree with the position you’ve outlined. I’m completely comfortable with it. And yet, in my mind, I have to question whether it is a bunch of amorphous codswallop! Essentially, I’ve long felt that the concept we portray of trying to leverage God through prayer, through our individual faith, and expect some outcome from it through our actions, through anointing ceremonies, through all of these things, but tagging on the end a divine trump card saying: “But Thy will be done.” To me, we’re talking out of both ends of our mouth. And so while I’m very comfortable with the concept of saying it’s God’s will and letting God be God, how is this not us really not reconciling the whole thing and ultimately just giving up?
I think it’s about place in time. In this dimension, we have a responsibility to one another. We have a responsibility to community, to family, to where we walk in this dimension. But this is a blip in time, less than a blink. Really, I’m supposed to be a spirit being having a human experience. So I am responsible for what I say, what I do, to you, to community, to government. We all march so we can have order. But when it comes to spiritual peace, then I hope I transition. Does that make sense in terms of where you put both sides of your mouth?
Jeff: To me, it doesn’t reconcile the two but maybe I’m not understanding exactly what you’re saying. I am completely comfortable with the concept of peace as being really the most desirable goal for us in human existence, period. To be at peace with everything, though, to me implies that we are able to apply some nebulous willingness to just let things be as they are. To me, that’s essentially saying we don’t have the answer to the question.
Donald: I don’t know that just accepting what is means giving up. I get what you’re saying. I think it’s huge. I think we’re all pretty comfortable with what Don has presented today, though I think it’s pretty radical.
Jeff: I’m very, very comfortable in that space. At the same time, I question whether we are bridging the gap. It’s clear that a plain textual reading of Scripture says one thing—and I would argue that’s what the human writers of Scripture meant it to say—but essentially we’re trying to outthink them and harmonize our life experience and spiritual experience to reconcile the two. When, in the end, we say, “Let’s let God be God, it’s up to him” and that brings us peace (which is my own experience), we are pushing the rest of it to the side, saying “It is what it is but this is where I’m most comfortable.” How is that not my own human approximation and philosophy put into this whole thing to make myself comfortable and come to this position of peace?
Carolyn: It’s much easier for a child to understand this. But we have always said that we have a guardian angel. Think of bringing this down to a child who is frightened at night. We pray with the child. We have to learn to pray in a way that we can satisfy ourselves but we are also part of a community. The Lord said, “Go and tell.” What are we going to go and tell? I find myself at a loss for words. Because I believe what Don said, totally. I live my life this way. You can pray and you torment yourself sometimes because you constantly look inside and say, “What am I doing wrong? Why are my prayers being answered?”
But this is that same philosophy that we have been taught from little on and you are teaching to your children or to your neighbor. We have to have a way, a pathway, to the Lord that gives us the confidence to allow us to give him everything. Even though “Thy will be done” is always said, we’re always thinking: “But if the Lord wants it the other way and if I am good enough he will hear what I say.” I think I’m sounding so mixed up, but I truly believe this new concept is the way.
Donald: When we look at something, what we quickly do is organize it until it all makes sense. We have to organize things to be able to feel a sense of peace in the context in which we live. It’s just human nature. So, in speaking about spiritual things, it seems that religion is just our context of organizing spirituality. And it gets really destructive. Because then the way I organize it and the way you organize it are different. And we start saying “You need to come over to my side.” We’re not even talking about spirituality. We’re talking about doctrine. So it’s human behavior. It’s just the way we do things, we organize things to be able to feel comfortable in a given context. This is changing the context.
Robin: Jesus said to go and make disciples. He didn’t say to go and make disciples of Judaism. He said to go and make disciples of the way, the truth and the life. That is the responsibility of congregations. If we can support one another and encourage one another in our congregated community, that’s a good thing. Most people don’t live the life of a hermit. We want to have people around sometimes, and sometimes we don’t. And that’s all right. We need rest, too.
What I learned over decades of losing people in my nuclear family is that God will teach us what we need to learn. My youngest sister died in a motorcycle accident. She was 20 years old. Her life as an adult was just beginning. She had turned to drugs in her mid teens but I saw her gain victory over that. I saw her stop. I saw her have hope. I saw her starting to think about going to college. Then she died.
My mom died 11 months later, from leukemia. The oncologist told me he felt it was grief over the loss of my sister that activated those cancer cells. My mom had a hard life. She had a lot of emotional rejection. It caused her to be bitter. We prayed for my mom and she constantly would push us away when we would try to talk about spiritual things, over and over again. For 17 years I prayed for my mother, then I gave up, saying: “God, she’s not listening. So I guess you’re going to be the only one she listens to.”
When my mom found out she had terminal leukemia, she started then thinking about her life and what she could do, what she was searching for in her life, and that love and acceptance had to start with God. She came out of her bedroom one morning and said to us: “I want you girls to know that last night I confessed my sins to God. And I asked him to come into my heart.” And my mom died. It wasn’t fun. She was a lot of pain. But she had peace that she found the love of God.
And then came the loss of my grandmother, who was my best friend. She was afraid of death. She had a calcified aortic vessel that caused her to not have sufficient oxygen to the brain, and she was going through auditory and visual hallucinations. She believed in God, she prayed, we would talk about spiritual things. She was afraid she was a sinner—that was the problem. She was stuck in thinking she had to earn her way to heaven, knowing that she didn’t deserve it (as none of us do). But she had that fear.
She grew sicker and sicker and ended up in hospice. I was constantly praying God to give her peace and let her not be afraid. She was 87 years and 11 months old. I didn’t want her to be afraid to go, for her spirit and her breath to return back to God. And talking about the Holy Spirit, and how it takes up our prayers but we can’t pray anymore—I couldn’t. All I could do was cry out: “Please don’t let her be afraid.” I went to see her for the last time. It was a two hour drive after work. It was dark, even though it was June, and I was exhausted. Her hospice aide said, “Your grandma’s been waiting for you.” She was dozing. She opened her eyes and said: “I’m not afraid.”
God teaches us in this way. He took me through several tragedies and I learned we have to give up our expectation that we know what is best, that we know the time when we or others should die. We must have faith even when—especially when—we can’t understand it. God is still on the throne. He knows the answer, and he’s not going to make a mistake.
Kiran: If we think that we need healing from sickness, or poverty, it might not work. But whenever I’ve prayed for forgiveness for my sins and for peace from the guilt that I have, it has always worked. I think the Bible stories convey that no matter where you are or how you feel, if you come to God for forgiveness, you will get it. I might not get healing from God—I might get healing from my family members or a doctor.
It’s as if we’re in an airplane falling into the ocean and I’m ringing for cabin service. It doesn’t make sense. What I need is to escape from the aeroplane. And I think that’s what God provides. In God’s view of things, he wants to save us from this world and reunite us with him. That’s his major goal. I think when we accept that goal and recognize that this is just a passing phase, it brings peace. But if you would have told me 20 years ago that peace is what Christ gives, not prosperity and so on, I would not have joined the church.
Don: We’re not quite done with faith yet. We’re hanging on to get a little bit more insight.
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