Oh me of little faith....

I've been struggling with faith recently. It was a very gradual transition and I didn't recognize the slide away until I was fully there. I can't say what started it, but I can say what added to it, and I can say what it was not fed by.

By faith, I mean the activeness of God. To lose faith is to put God as an ideal, a set of concepts that are great and magnificent, but utterly powerless to act on their own. It puts God in the same category that Tolstoy and Thomas Jefferson put Jesus in. Jefferson and many of the founding fathers held to the rationalist belief that God deftly wound up the universe like a clock and stepped away. It was all there to begin with. By "all", he means the physical laws of nature. As such, God doesn't interfere with His creation. By "creation" he means the physical universe and the laws that govern it. So, armed with his reason, Jefferson proceeded to scan the Gospels with a pen knife and removed all supposed instances where God interfered and then sewed the remaining bits together under the title of The Jefferson Bible. There was no miraculous catch of fish in off the other side of the boat, 5,000 nor 4,000 were fed from a few loaves and fishes, there were no healings, no raisings from the dead including that of Christ's. There were simply the words and teachings of a great philosopher.

I never really doubted the miracles and the more irrational parts of the Bible that many skeptics and atheists scoff, but in this recent funk I haven't exactly believed them either. And it isn't so much those miracles and interferences by God, but rather the ones in my life. I felt that God wasn't moving. I wasn't hearing His voice, nor seeing Him move. Everything was in a perfectly rational stasis. If I can't see at least His effects, how can I trust He'll ever affect anything?

In Junior High group, we've been going through the book of Daniel. Daniel is an interesting book of the Bible. It is written mostly in Aramaic and chronicles some of the life events of Daniel and company. Many of the prophecies can be seen to be so accurate as to what actually happened in history that many scholars think it was written after the fact and attributed to some guy who didn't exist named Daniel. Even some of the instruments named in the book have greek names and weren't invented until after the fall of the Babylonians.

Doubt sets in.

But at the same time, Jesus in Matthew refers to the prophet Daniel and references the book. So trust some scholars or trust Jesus? Reason, logic, doubt.

Yesterday, I stumbled across a site called Real Live Preacher. I read this and felt almost similar. It was tough to read how someone could lose faith completely. And all at the hand of reason and not seeing God work.

I was and am, still trying to figure out about InnerChange and other scheduling dilemmas as described in the previous post. The main reason I decided not to go to Peru was because I couldn't see how I could fit everything in. To try to scrunch in six weeks, (never mind the processing part) didn't seem like a wise choice. Even just going in October with InnerChange sends most people into an air of disbelief. To rush like that isn't the wise thing to do.

I was realizing that I had made those decisions and questioned my current plan because it was the wise thing to do. Beyond wisdom, I thought God couldn't make it happen. God had gotten small. He wasn't able to make it work out. Nor did I trust Him to make it work out.

And this is a difficult line to walk. How much can we trust in our wisdom and how much can we trust in God's power? Should I even walk that line? 1st Corinthians comes to mind, how the foolishness of God is more than the wisdom of man and that the weakness of God is more than the power of man.

I realize I have to let God be active. Even if I don't see Him moving in my life or others lives, that doesn't mean He can't. Nor does it mean that He won't. Nor does it mean that I can't walk out in faith.

He reminded me about one of the themes in the book of Mark: fear vs. faith. I thought of the town where Jesus could do no miracle because of their lack of faith. You will never see a miracle unless you expect to.

He reminded me of how everyone healed was healed by their faith. "Your faith has made you well." is said so often. Most of the time, these words found themselves in the ears of people in their most desperate moments. That is when you need faith the most, when that hope for healing is all you have.

He reminded me of the Centurion in Luke who never even had Jesus come under his roof. "I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!" And his servant was healed. So simple.

I can't say I have faith like that, but I hope and pray that God grows it into that. I don't care about seeing miracles so much as I care about knowing and being with a living, active, healing, interfering God though whom ALL is possible. That's the faith I want and now long for and know I will receive.

"Tu puedes todo con Dios!" Its a phrase I taught some of the kids in Peru. It is a horrible adjustment and translation of Philipians 4:13. What this Spanish phrase says is "You can all with God!" By the time I realized how horrible the grammar was, it was to late to fix it. The saying had become a buzzword of its own among the kids and came with motions and all. Despite the poor grammar, it actually is quite good in itself. You can be all, you can do all, you can know all, you can not need to know all, you can love all, you can live all with God.

As for reason and logic and the doubts they bring, I leave with a quote from Dostoyevsky's "Notes from the Underground" after which this blog is named:

"Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too."