THE LEAP OF FAITH AND UNFAITH

Faith by its very nature includes doubt. Faith is not knowledge. Faith is a belief that something is true even though one cannot prove its veracity. We believe God exists, that God loves and forgives us, that we will be with God forever in our death but we also have some doubts, whether we admit to them or not. We have those doubts because we cannot prove any of that which we believe.

That does not mean that which we believe is simply unbelievable. It merely means that we cannot prove it to be by some scientific means. That is why there always seems to be this battle between faith and science. A scientist seems to need prove beyond a shadow of a doubt whereas a believer only demands enough evidence to accept the truth of what just might be true if one could only prove it scientifically.

Thus, for any believer there comes a moment in his or her seeking for the scientific truth that s/he must take what Kierkegaard called a “leap of faith”. Christianity, for instance, makes complete sense, even scientifically, until one comes up against the Trinity. Then one has to take that leap and say, “I believe even though I don’t completely understand. It makes enough sense, not complete sense, even if I cannot prove it empirically.”

People of faith take those leaps on a daily basis. We believe people will be trustworthy and true. We believe it is best to love our neighbors and even to love our enemies, not because as G. K. Chesterton once bemused “they are one and the same”, but because we have learned that loving is better than hating, that loving brings with it rewards and benefits that hating cannot and will not.

Yet people of faith are also tempted every day to take a leap of unfaith. That happens when our prayers to the God we believe in don’t seem to be answered, when something horrible happens to someone we love for no good or apparent reason, when our neighbor responds to our love not with indifference but with downright cruelty. In those times why believe? Why be a Christian? Why not leap back and away?

It would be wonderful and so much easier to live this life were there be no necessity to believe, where we could know all, where we would not have to trust in another, even in our God, but simply to know for sure and for certain. Or maybe not. As painful as it is sometimes to live this life as a believer, it is certainly not as dull and boring as it would be if everything were known for certain.

That truth may not help when we are in the midst of doubt and even despair because our faith has been tried and seems to have lost the battle. The grace is that our faith is strong enough that we keep on going rather than turn around and leap away from the God we believe in even though we cannot prove God’s existence.

In fact, it is when we seem to be most at a loss, most distant and most doubtful that we take that leap of faith. It is in those moments when we are tempted to turn around and turn away that God gives us a push and we leap further into God’s loving arms.

WHERE IS THERE?

Those who have children have heard the plaint many, many times, almost too many times it seems. We’re in the car and going somewhere and from somewhere behind us we hear the cranky question “Are we there yet?”. Of course, we’re not there yet. If we were, why would we still be driving and the complainer(s) from the back seat would be now running around to drive us even more crazy.

In life there is always a there. We are going somewhere: to the store, to school, to work, to play, over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house, wherever. Once we get there, we think we are there; and so we are, for a while anyway. Then it’s back on the road to where we came from. Another there. Life is full of journeys from here to there and back again. Sometimes, truly, when we get where we are going, we do not ever go back to from where we came.

Someone once observed that the road to success is always under construction. And the truth is that it truly is. For how do we define “success”? Probably in the same way we answer the question, “How much is enough?”. My suspicion is that those who deem themselves successful always wonder if they are really that successful, if they really do have enough. I would leave that for such to struggle with.

Another truth is life, the road through life, is always under construction. In this life we never really get there because we cannot define what that there is. We never know for sure if we have arrived there because tomorrow may move us from where we are to another there. Only in death have we finally arrived at the end of our destination. That’s when God says to us, “You’re there. You’re here. The journey is over.”

Thus, every day is a day on the road. As we go through the day, we construct that day by what we say and do. At the end of the day, we fall asleep and then wake up the next day to get on the road again: another day of construction. How well or how poorly our construction efforts are is up to us. Yes, so many others have an effect on what we are doing just as we have an effect on what they are doing, the day they are constructing. But what is ultimately important is what we are doing on our own behalf.

We can always build better, or if we have messed up the construction for the day, build back better tomorrow. If we do not, we’ll have even more work to do the next day. Yes, we need to be appreciative of the construction we did when we reflect back on the day at days end. But we must never believe that tomorrow cannot be better, that we nailed it. If sit back on our laurels and believe we have done enough, those nails will rust and our building will collapse.

Every day is a new day, an opportunity to construct it as best we can. You see, we’re never there until we’re finally there with God in eternity.

WHICH WAY TO GO?

The late, great philosopher Yogi Berra once opined, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Well, of course! We’ve all been there in our lives. We come to a point where we have to make a decision on what to do, which way to go, which option to choose. We can’t just stand there and gape. We have to make a decision and hope and pray that it is the right one, that we take the correct fork in the road.

How do we know what to do? Sometimes the answer is clear and we have no doubts about what to do. But not always given all the uncertainties in life. Even when we truly believe we made the right decision, events can happen that prevent the outcome that we had hoped. Perhaps we can never know for sure that we are taking the right fork in the road, but we have to take one anyway.

So how do we move on in quiet confidence even, with some trepidation of course? There’s an old African proverb that might help. “If you keep your head and heart going in the right direction, you won’t have to worry about your feet.” Exactly! My Mom used to tell us, “Use your head” after we had done something foolish, made the wrong choice. It was too late to undo what happened. She was just reminding us that if we had indeed used our head, we wouldn’t have done what we did.

Managers and coaches always tell their players the same thing: “Keep you head in the game.” When they do not, bad things happen. So, too, in life. If we keep using our head, keeping it in the game of life, if you will, we will more often than not make the right decision, take the right fork in the road.

But sometime more is also decided. If our heart is not into what we are doing, we will get into trouble, make wrong decisions. Athletes often retire earlier than what might seem normal because they will tell us that their hearts aren’t in it any more. People change jobs even though they are doing great work where they are because their heart isn’t in it any more. They need to move on and take another fork in their road in life.

When our head and our heart into what we are doing, where we are going, more often than not our feet will take us in the right direction. Yes, given the fact that we are not in total control of our life, the road we take, the decisions we make, might not turn out the way we had anticipated or hoped. That’s simply life. But even when that happened, what we discovered was that we made the best of it.

That is all we can hope for and, I believe, all that God asks of us or we can ask of ourselves. If we use our head, keep it in the game, and if we put our heart and soul into what we are doing and how we are living, more often than not our feet will take us where we need to go. And even when we do take the wrong road, somehow our head and our heart will get us back onto the right path – as we have all learned from experience.

LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES

As we grow older, there are times, probably too, too many, when we reflect back on the mistakes we made, we say to ourselves, “If I only knew then what I know now”. But by now, of course, it is too late to undo the mistakes, the wrongs, the foolish decisions we made back then. We have had to live with the consequences whatever those consequences have been. We had no choice. We couldn’t undo what we did.

We move on in life for that is how life is. To be sure there are times when we get stuck in the present as the present moves into the future and becomes the past. Something happened and we can’t seem to move on. Whether that something was of our own making or because it was something that happened to us, we got stuck. And we stayed stuck until somehow in some way we were able to move on.

Hopefully, when we finally did move on, we learned from whatever it was that caused us to get stuck in the first place. If we did not learn, we were and still are prone to get stuck again when something of the same sort happens again. And it will. Mistakes, wrongs done to or by us, foolish decisions, somehow never seem to vanish from our lives. They rise up to bite us every now and then. Such is life!

The good part is that as we grow older, these events become less as less. We have learned from the past. We move on and continue to do so, but we move on not so much looking over our shoulders for something bad to happen, but from the perspective of having learned from the past. A wise person once observed that life is lived forward but understood backward.

Isn’t that the truth?! (Double punctuation mark) We both realize that we have learned from the past on the one hand and are surprised to realize how much we did learn. Not only that, when reflecting back on those unfortunate incidents in the past, we often have to admit that, as bad as they might have been, as traumatic and painful they were, we are glad they happened because they led us to where we are today and we are thankful for where we are.

You see, if the bad had not happened, our life would have turned out differently and we have no idea what that life would have become. We may think it would have been better, but that is a moot point. Our life now is the result of everything in our life that has led us to where we are right now. We only understand where we are now when we look back on from where we came.

The blessing is that we have come this far because we have learned from the past, the good and the bad. And we will continue to be blessed in spite of the mistakes and foolish decisions and the bad that happens and which, given human nature we cannot avoid, if we continue to look forward, always learning from those backward glances.

DON’T THANK GOD TODAY

I would like to begin with a word of advice. And that is: Don't thank God. Not today, anyway. Tomorrow. The next day; but don't thank God today. Do something else. That something else is to thank all God's helpers: our mom and dad, the teachers we have or had in school; Peter, Paul and Mary; the neighbor down the street; even our brothers and sisters. They are all God's helpers.

For it is all of these people who make us realize that God is what it is all about. God does everything for us, but so much of what God does for us is done indirectly through others. He feeds us and clothes us as we grow up through mom and dad. He teaches us how to live in His world through the words and examples of Miss Simms in first grade and Mr. Johnson in eighth grade.  He encourages us through the examples of his saints and enlivens us through the music of his singers and the paintings of his artists. God works through others most of the time. Sure, in a pinch, God does it all by himself. But by and large God works through his children -- through you and through me.

For example: Is that old but warm coat you decided to get one more year out of still hanging in the closet from last year when you didn't get that year out of it that you said you would? Today would be a good day to take it to someone who needs it. That's God taking care of his children through his children. Matter of fact, the only way that God can and will see to it that that cold, little old lady has a warm coat to wear is through one of us getting it to her. God does not work like Cinderella's Fairy Godmother and wave a magic wand and poof!! new coat. We have to be that real Godchild who works, not magic, but love.

The Apostle John tells us that God is Love and he or she who lives in love, lives in God and God lives in that person. When we do something loving, it is God living in us who does it. And when someone does something loving for us, it is God living in the other who does it. Sometimes we forget about the God living in us and in others.

We must not. We need to spend some time, you and I, thinking about how much God really does love us: how God gave his son to us to live and die and be raised up -- all for us, all because God loves us. But as great an act of love that Jesus' death on the cross was for us, it would all be in vain if God did not continue to love us in those around us and love us in ourselves.

Jesus's death on the cross forgives all our sins. His resurrection from the dead gives us eternal life, even though we really don't deserve it. Those are great and fantastic gifts. But the greatest gift God gives us every day is his continual love for us that is shown to us in and through other people: mom and dad and teacher and friend and neighbor.

Knowing that I am forgiven and will have eternal life is great. But knowing that I am loved is absolutely necessary. I know God loves me because I see him loving me through you. You and I are called to make God's love known to others by our very lives. Thank God for his love. But don't thank God today. Thank those who love us through him.

VIRTUE

"Virtue is its own punishment", says Denniston, whoever Denniston may be. Obviously he is a pessimist, albeit a realist, and that for two reasons. First of all, those who do good are always suspect. "Nobody is that good," we say. "What's her motive?" we wonder. Somehow we seem to get the impression that people are good either because they are afraid of being bad or because they want to get something in return for their good actions – something even better.

But is that really true for you and for me?  Granted, we are not always all that good. Granted, there is a little sin in each one of us, a little too much perhaps. But we are not good simply because we are afraid of what will happen to us were we to stray from the path of righteousness. Let's give ourselves and our God a little credit. We are basically good people who do good because that is the way God created us. That's the way we are.

And, granted, sometimes we do have ulterior motives for being good, or at least better than we might be. For children it is the Santa Claus Syndrome: "Better watch out...Santa Claus is coming to town" For adults, it is the Selfish Syndrome: "I want something I may not really deserve, all else being equal."

So, in all honesty, we are good sometimes for the wrong reasons. We are virtuous sometimes for other than the right or best reasons. But that is no reason not to be virtuous. Contrary to Denniston, virtue is its own reward: just knowing we are doing what we should be doing makes us feel good. And isn't that sometimes, even always, reward enough for us??

Denniston is a realist, secondly, however, because he realizes that those who do good are called upon to do good again...and again and again. Denniston might call such people "suckers." I suspect God would call them Christians, call them his children.  Yes, if we do good for others, we get a reputation. People begin to expect it of us. Churches and pastors who are generous in helping people who knock on their doors soon find a line of people looking for help. But is helping another person, deserving or not, a form of punishment? Really?

If we took Denniston seriously, the only reason to be virtuous is so that we can get something out of our actions. Virtue would not be its own reward. On the contrary, if we listen to Denniston, we would be virtuous because we were looking for a reward. Obviously, I don't buy that. Virtue is its own reward.

All you and I need do to verify that is look back upon those times when we were good, selfless. Selfishness, on the other hand is its own punishment. All we need do to verify that is remember those times when we have been selfish.

If we are looking for rewards for our actions, there is only one way to go: the way of the virtuous, the way of Jesus which, yes, is sometimes the way of the cross. But that, too, that cross, is the way to the reward in this life and the life to come. The choice is ours.

TO WHOM ARE WE LISTENING?

Jean Kerr tells the story. Her young child came home from school all teary-eyed and sad. When she asked what was the matter, he told her about the play he was in in grade school. The play was about Adam and Eve and he was Adam. Jean had a quizzical look on her face and asked, "Why so sad?  That's wonderful. You have the best part. You are the leading man." "Maybe so," her son replied, "but the snake has all the lines."

That is a funny story. And it's a good reminder to you and me. The problem that I have – and I suspect, the problem you have – is not so much that the snake has all the lines. It is rather that we believe all the lines that the snake feeds us. Remember the snake's first line in the Bible, in Genesis? "If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will become like God." Now that is a classic line. Who wouldn't like to be like God? Imagine the power to eliminate disease and famine and poverty. The power to make everything right. The power, the power, the power. Even if we use all that power correctly, it's a wonderful thought, a wonderful temptation.

Like Adam and his wife, we, too, bought the snake's line, all of it: hook, line and sinker. We grabbed the bait. And we got hooked. Boy did we get hooked. And we've been swallowing the bait ever since, choking on it. You see, back in the very beginning man and woman did not need to become like God. They already were. That is how God created them. But by doing whatever they did, by buying the snake's line, they became unlike God. Now, ever since then, we have been trying to become like God again.

Becoming like God, however, is not, no matter how it seems, having illusions of grandeur. Nothing of the sort. Becoming like God, becoming perfect as God is perfect, is what being human is all about. Once mankind bought the snake's line, once we became imperfect, we could no longer be and no longer were perfect.

The Old Testament is a record of the beginning of that journey on the road back to perfection, that trek down the path to becoming like God once again. The journey, of course, ends in Jesus, who through his death and resurrection gives us the means to perfection. The only hindrance is that whereas in the beginning perfection was a fact, was a reality in this life, that is no longer so. We now can become perfect only in and through our own death and resurrection.

That may be unfortunate because it then becomes all too easy to not try. I mean, why make the effort when we won't see the results, when we won't see perfection, in this life? Why indeed? If we buy that reasoning, we've swallowed the snake's line once again.

The reality of the situation is to understand that even the attempt is worth the effort; the struggle itself is worthwhile, that carrying a cross is good and necessary. That's another line, of course. It can be grabbed onto or it can be passed up. But whose line are we going to believe, the snake's or Jesus'? Seems to me that the snake has had all the lines long enough. It's time we started listening to the Writer, the Director, the Playwright in the drama of Salvation instead of listening to one of the actors.