Beyond Belief to Faith

Galatians 5 (The Message)
The Life of Freedom
1 Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
2-3I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ's hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law. 4-6I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.

As Christ’s birthday comes closer the great weight of His love rests on me. It resonates within me and my spirit responds. I am filled with sincere gratitude and peace. The freedom I have found in Christ is so tangible to me. The understanding that this liberty has been freely given, awakens an even greater sense of thankfulness in my soul. Incongruously however, underneath it all I am aware of a deep sorrow. I wonder at its presence there. A cold blast in a warm house filled with Christmas cheer.
The source of the sorrow I believe is the realization that there are so many of Gods children out in the snow on Christmas so to speak. This sorrow is not strictly sorrow that is based on this reality. That is with me always. This sorrow derives from my own ineffectiveness at communicating the value of this Christ bought freedom to these snowbound souls. The sorrow is in me due to my own great failure to move beyond belief into faith that is expressed in love. I will attempt to clarify what I mean.

Faith, like love, is a word that is loaded with meaning. For a great examination of the word faith I recommend Marcus J. Borg’s book “The Heart of Christianity”, though you should be aware going into it that Professor Borg is a proponent of what is commonly referred to as Progressive Christianity. If you choose to read his book you are choosing to be offended. He is a great thinker regardless of his paradigm and his treatment on the idea of faith is well worth some offense. Much of what I will share about faith has come out of my thinking through and considering what he has to say in this book.

Faith the word can have various meanings. Much of what we would call our “Faith” is rooted in a nearly subconscious and often semi-errant understanding of what “Faith” is. Speaking strictly for myself I can attest to this. Often what I think of as my faith is more accurately a summation of what I believe. For example I may say I have faith that the stock market will rebound and the thousands of dollars I have lost over the last few months will be recuperated. Really what I am saying is that based on market trends, past historical data, and the advice of knowledgeable people I choose to believe that my money will be recouped. I don’t actually have faith in this, because really I have no idea if this will truly happen. I just believe that it will based on my understanding of all the variables in the situation. Faith is something much deeper. In this situation faith is what tells me that no matter what happens in the market with the money that I have invested, God has got my back. He will take care of me even if the market crashes; I lose my job, and am diagnosed with cancer. The only way that Faith fails is if Gods love for me fails.

Put in other words beliefs are often functions of our brains. While faith is more a function of, for lack of a better word, our hearts. Another way to see this is our beliefs are determined by our decision making processes while faith is based on a deep knowledge of and intimate relationship with God our father. It’s easy for me to have faith in God because it flows out of love, it is impossible for me to have faith in the stock market because it flows out of something else (greed, need, desire, fear, etc) but something specifically not love. Love is one key ingredient to an authentic faith experience (the other is hope, but we will talk about that some other time.) Consider the word faithfulness. If you like doing that sort of thing and have the time look into it. It is berry berry interestink. Or something.

So by now you are saying to yourself. Okay this is pretty boring and what does it have to do with Christmas anyway Tip? Well let me tell you, if I can.

Jesus came an as act faith, through love, by God. The Creator had faith that sending Jesus would break the bonds of, self worship, religion, empire (the world system), Satan, and so on to set His children free. Aren’t you glad that He didn’t simply believe that it would happen but He had great faith in His plan? Our only obligation to receive this gift of freedom is to believe in it. I find it very interesting that the word that is used here is believe and not the word faith. It implies that to receive eternal freedom we don’t even have to have a deep relationship with God. We simply need to believe that this relationship is possible. Faith is a result of the love that becomes real to us through a relationship. In this respect faith is belief that has matured through the application of love. Belief is the seed, faith is the fruit. Love is what nurtures and empowers growth.

So to get back to my sorrow, here it is. Often I carry so many beliefs around with me that my faith gets lost under the burden of belief. I attempt to share my faith with others but what I actually share are my beliefs. My beliefs have not been purified in the crucible of love. They are based on things other than love, often my own thoughts and opinions. My beliefs don’t draw others closer to God. In fact they do the opposite. They bind people up in the process of dealing with them. When I share belief instead of faith what happens is this. It burdens people with the task of having to reconcile their beliefs with mine if they are going to be drawn to God through them. If they fail in that or are unwilling to attempt it they remain unmoved, or worse they are repelled. This is what happens every time I (as a Christian) say something to someone that is based on what I believe, regardless of the accuracy or inaccuracy of the specific belief. People don’t want more crap to believe in, they have too much of that already. What they want is love. Ultimately what they want is faith. They sense it down in the deep recesses of their humanity but they can’t quite connect with it. They are too bound up. They need love to come and set them free.

So that is why I am sad this Christmas. I am sad because I am so happy but I am also burdened with need to share faith and too often I share belief. I really want to go beyond belief to faith. To answer my question from a couple of blogs ago this is what I have found that my dad wants for Christmas. He wants me to spread love to allow Him to sow the seed of belief so that faith can be born into the world.

So if you are like me, and you want to see your beliefs get the heck out of loves way so faith can grow. I encourage you today. It is actually really simple, serve others and it will happen. We want it to be complicated so that we don’t have to submit to the simple way. The truth however is found in humble pursuit. I will work at if you will. Identify the small things that you can do that will assist someone. Do them. Stand back and get ready to be amazed. Have fun and Merry Christmas.

1 Corinthians 13
The Excellence of Love
2 and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.