Absolute Essentials – Part II

If all we need to do to be saved is to believe in Jesus, what happens after we are saved and we start to have doubts? Do we stop being saved as soon as that happens. I’m not just talking about the doubts that often come right after you believe, kind of like buying a car and having immediate second thoughts.

I’m talking about someone who has known Jesus for a long time and they start to struggle in their faith. Maybe they don’t doubt God exists, but they doubt God’s ability to rescue them even while they are still trusting God. In other words, they struggle with God, but they don’t give up on God. They are filled with doubt if not unbelief. Or maybe they struggle even worse.

What happens after we are saved and we fail miserably? I mean really blow it big time? What happens if we keep blowing it, even after we are supposed to know better?

As I said in the last posting, when a person first believes in or trusts Jesus, they don’t know everything there is to know about God. They don’t even believe everything the Bible or the Church teaches. But they believe enough to know that Jesus will save them, in spite of all their own doubts and fears.

The same is true 5 weeks or 5 years or 5 decades later. We are not more “saved” because we believe more of the Bible or know more about God. So when doubts or worries start to flood in like a tsunami, we don’t suddenly get to the point where we are unsaved. Faith is not like some quota that you have to keep from dipping below a certain level.

That’s why Jesus uses that famous comparison with faith being the size of a mustard seed. A seed which is so miniscule – you’ve probably seen one hanging around someone’s neck in a glass ball – seems hardly worth anything at all. It is such “worthless” faith that is all that is needed to save us and to keep us saved. And such faith God’s Spirit provides – in fact, only God’s Spirit can provide and provide He does through revelation, meaning we can’t try to get it through our own efforts.

Even when I doubt. Even when I fail. Even when I am tempted by unbelief. As the great old hymn, “Our Great Savior” concludes, “I am his and he is mine.”

So when Peter denies Jesus and Judas betrays Jesus on the night before Jesus is crucified, are they both lost at that point? In short, no. When later Jesus talks with Peter, the question Jesus phrases is, “Peter, do you love me?” It is not a question of whether Jesus loves Peter – that is never in doubt as a fact. Jesus never gives up on Peter. All that Jesus wants Peter to admit is that he (Peter) has not given up on Jesus. Not that Jesus has any doubts, but he wants Peter to face up to his own faith, that he still has faith.

Judas never gives Jesus that chance. He takes his own life, robbing himself of any opportunity to hear Jesus ask, “Judas, do you love me?” What? After all that Judas has done? What Judas did was no different than what Peter did. Except that Judas then gave in to unbelief and denied himself the opportunity to be restored by Jesus.

Saving grace is a truly amazing thing. We don’t earn it. We don’t walk in and out of it like the children’s song, “Go in and out the window.” We can’t get more of it, like accumulating brownie points. It is a gift to us that we receive by faith and by faith keep, moving ahead in life one step at a time.

Absolute Essentials – Part I

I started this series by talking about doubts that are wrestle worthy, but I’ve decided I want to change the title and talk about absolute essentials of faith. This makes sense, especially because I’ve already said that everything is wrestle-worthy. Surprisingly, when it comes to faith, there are very few absolute essentials.

What do I mean by absolute essentials? When people talk about theological doctrines, they often call such doctrines “essentials” or “fundamentals” or some such name by which they identify a certain set of truths as bottom line when it comes to being a part of their particular community of faith. Generally they teach that you have to believe all of their doctrines in order to become a member of their church. But most evangelical Christians, at least, have a lot lower threshold when it comes to understanding what it means to become a Believer. What is it that the Bible says? “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.”

It is a very interesting verse, this one in Acts 16:31. Surely Luke is being cryptic in describing what Paul and Silas were saying to the jailer in this story. Or is he? Because when the jailer, who has just had his jail shaken by an earthquake, asks Paul and Silas, his prisoners, what he has to do to be saved, all that Luke records is this one sentence. Luke does go on to say that these two prisoners expounded the word of the Lord to the jailer right then and there.

But it couldn’t have been very long, not like the time that other guy fell asleep and fell out of a window because Paul preached so long. No, for Luke says that it wasn’t long before the jailer and his entire household were being baptized in water, meaning they had already come to believe in Jesus, just by what little Paul and Silas had already shared with them.

I have a feeling that whatever else Paul and Silas said that night, most of it was a blur to these new believers. Like the guy who was healed by Jesus and some religious leaders tried to mess with his head and the guy finally said, “Look all I know is that I was blind and now I see.” Here’s the jailer saying, “I believe Jesus has the ability to help me out tonight.”

Some people point to other passages where it says that we are to believe and be baptized and then we will be saved. So which is it? Just believe or believe and be baptized? Taking Paul and Silas at their word here, the only thing needed to be saved is believing. Believing what? Believing in Jesus. Believing what about Jesus? That he can save you. What do we need saving from? Apparently the jailer knew, because that is how he phrased his question.

An earthquake had just torn apart his jail. If any prisoners escaped he was in a heap of trouble, so he might as well take his own life right then and there. But Paul and Silas stopped him and said that everything was all right as no one had escaped. So the question the jailer asked wasn’t necessarily related to “how can I get to heaven” or have eternal life. It really had to do with “how do I get out of this mess I am in right now.” Nothing more. And Paul and Silas said that all he had to do was believe in Jesus, that Jesus would get him out of this mess.

So what is saving faith? If we take an honest look at this jailer’s experience, all that matters is that the man trust that Jesus has the ability to get him out of the mess he is in. And after he believes that much, more things will start to make sense.

When it comes to absolute essentials, there aren’t very many.

Wrestle-Worthy Doubts – Part II

This present series of musings was inspired by a reader who asked me to describe some of my wrestle-worthy doubts. I’m not inclined to bear my deepest and darkest secrets to the unseen masses – be they one or a million – who read this blog. But I will not hide my doubts or struggles either. The truth be told, all doubts are wrestle-worthy.

Doubts do play a role in moving us away from our presuppositions about God and toward a point of truly examining the Scriptures. Yet some Believers grow uneasy with doubts that linger or reoccur. In their understanding, doubts (about God in particular) should be settled once and for all. If that were the case, we’d have only one Psalm written by David that questions God and His actions. Instead we have many, for David wrestled with God all his life, as did all the Bible greats.

Even post-Pentecost pillars of the faith such as Peter and Paul. You see this in Peter’s wavering in Antioch. He has heard clearly from God that, contrary to everything he understood about Mosaic law, there is nothing “unclean” when it comes to eating, including with whom you eat. And yet he struggles to eat with Gentiles with whom he ate before the Judaizers arrived from Jerusalem. This struggle on Peter’s part may be dismissed as a lower-level cultural dilemma rather than an issue of faith. But Paul makes it clear that such “cultural” waverings strike at the heart of the Faith.

As I’ve written in another weekly blog, “Ethics in the 21st Century,” ethics is living out what you believe. Show me your behavior, the New Testament writer James claims, and I’ll show you what you believe. The implication in all this is that when our behavior deviates from what we profess to believe about God, it is a reflection of some internal questioning or confusion about what we believe about God.

E. Stanley Jones, a Methodist missionary in India and a great writer, was a close friend of Gandhi’s. Apart from the rare faith he found in Jones, Gandhi was deeply distressed by Christians. It is said that he greatly admired Jesus, but had little time for Jesus’ followers. There is a significant reason for this response on Gandhi’s part. As a law student in South Africa, Gandhi thought to visit a church to learn more about Christianity until he was stopped at the church door by a sign which read “No dogs or Indians allowed.” And, of course, his treatment as a native of India at the hands of a “Christian” colonial power did little to correct this lesson in the ways of the Christian faith.

As believers, we tend to scoff at the idea that “hypocrites in the church” are valid excuses for doubt. And yet, both the Bible and common experience do not take such hypocrites or hypocritical behavior lightly. Our behavior as followers of Jesus is our strongest witness. Contrary to common thinking however, inconsistent behavior is not the real offense. Pretending we have no struggles or inconsistencies is.

The world (as with God) will take any imperfection over the claim of perfection. While the Scriptures do not teach a hierarchy of sins, the sins of pride that block us from receiving God’s grace may be seen as far more deadly than “mere” sensual sins.

The sin that is least understood is what is called the “unpardonable” sin, what Jesus refers to as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. In a short answer, I favor the interpretation that sees Matthew 12:32 as referring to the work of the Holy Spirit of convicting men and women of sin. If, in pride, we shut out this Voice of God and “harden our hearts” in unresponsiveness, we remove ourselves from God’s grace. Interesting how Jesus reserves his strongest words for those who lead others away from that same Voice.

So, as with most people who are honest about their doubts, I think my doubts about God start with what I see in the inconsistencies of faith in us human beings, including myself. The occasional acts of God that arbitrarily kill innocent babies aside, God is easy to believe in. It is when we get to people that faith runs into trouble.

Wrestle-Worthy Doubts - Part I

In recent months, word has come that a friend of many years has died. I don’t know the circumstance of her “passing,” as we say, but I do know that she suffered much in this life and wrestled in a very authentic way with what the next life offers. Not all may have found her answers acceptable, but what concerned me more were those who questioned her right to wrestle.

Nancy Arnold Eiesland suffered much in this life, particularly physically, but it was the wounds of fellow Believers which pained her – and me – most. I recall her telling me how when she was in Bible college her teacher grew tired of her questions and told her she could no longer ask them in class, lest they confuse her fellow students. She thought this odd, as do I to this day. Those students were preparing to minister to multitudes of Believers and unbelievers in our society and in cultures around the world and yet the teacher was afraid to let them wrestle with the very questions those multitudes wrestle with every day. Where better to wrestle than in a school devoted to the study of the Bible?

After graduating with honors from that very school (in spite of or because of her questions, I do not know), she went on to continue to ask questions, questions which led her to fall out of favor with her circle of fellow Believers who, like that teacher, chose to discredit her questioning rather than wrestle beside her. She was no longer welcome in the midst of the “Faithful” because her questions made her appear unfaithful to them.

I have my own doubts, but one thing I do not doubt: the Master does not disparage my or anyone else’s doubts. Doubt is not the enemy of faith. Unbelief is. Unbelief says don’t ask questions, don’t think, don’t wrestle. Any such wrangling is useless. As if God or faith were not up to the challenges. Doubt says there must be something worth striving for, something worth investigating. What we already know is not the sum of God. So doubt leads us away from unbelief toward faith.

At the same time, grace makes ample room for doubt. Grace understands that doubt is not the enemy, but is a part of the process through which we embrace faith. The Apostle Thomas is Example Number One. People often label him “Doubting Thomas” as if he is a bad model. Thomas’s moment in the Gospel limelight shouts to the world that those who doubt, those who question are very much welcome into the inner circle of Jesus. In fact, who is the only disciple not present the day Thomas posed his questions? The one who had stopped asking questions, the one known as Judas Iscariot.

Questions and doubts and wrestlings are a sign of God’s presence. As we used to say to our team in China, a mind that begins to ask questions is taking its first step toward the Cross. God welcomes the child who probes, who questions, who wrestles, who thinks, who engages, who challenges. On the other hand, a nonquestioning mind is asleep, comatose, dead – even lost.

At a moment of deepest despair in my own life, a close observer noted that though I was full of questions and anger and challenges for God, I had not given up on faith in God. Apparently at that dark moment in my life, I had not let go of life – or God Himself. Rather than flee God’s presence, I chose like Jacob to wrestle with God until I found his blessing (or favor). Jacob, who wrestled with God until God blessed him had his name changed to Israel, which means “struggles or wrestles with God.” He, who could find no favor on earth, found favor in heaven because he refused to quit wrestling.

Though I haven’t seen Nancy in years, she remains a beacon of faith to me, of a faith that is not afraid of the dark or of doubts, but a faith that embraces all that God places in our lives and says that though there is something of God very difficult for me, I will not let God go until He favors me. Nancy, like Jacob, suffered severely in her hip. That suffering was caught up in all her questions. But all her questions led her toward and not away from God. And that is the profound secret of wrestle-worthy doubts.

Authenticity, Idols and Profanity – Part VII

Just what is an idol? Not merely a physical object, an idol is anything that assumes the role of God in our lives, whether we call it a god, an idol or otherwise. An idol is anything that cannot be questioned, challenged or protested. Anything that cannot be turned away from or rejected in our lives. Anything that controls us, orders our priorities or dictates our preferences.

An odd thing happens when we create idols. We make them untouchable. Take the Ten Commandments themselves. Some Believers would have us putting them up on walls everywhere, even in government buildings. Far better that we take them down off the walls and argue and wrestle with their implications. Far better that we question what they really mean and seek to go through the harder work of living them out. Much harder than posting them, but much safer than by posting them, turning them into idols and profaning the name of God in the process.

Now we can and should prioritize values in our lives, such as God first, then, say, our spouse, if we have one, and so on. But when we say, God first, then what we are saying is that everything is judged by that one supreme value.

Even what I believe about God must be open to reexamination and reevaluation on an ongoing basis. For my beliefs about God are not the same as God Himself. Christian Scriptures and doctrine are not to be worshipped, they are to be examined and wrestled with.

Otherwise we risk falling into the sin of the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law, who in Jesus' day had made their religious belief system so idolatrous, so above touching, that they missed God Himself when He passed through their midst. Interestingly, Jesus is not afraid to question everything taught by Moses even while saying he has come to fulfill the law of Moses. With Jesus, nothing sacred is left beyond the reach of mankind. When Jesus dies, the Holy of Holies itself, that most sacred of places, is opened for all to see and enter, signifying that God is now that much more approachable.

I am fascinated when I read where Jesus encourages Thomas to touch the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side. It is as if he is saying to this friend of his, torn in the conflict of doubt, that he wants Thomas to test both his doubts and his beliefs. Sometimes we get the idea that worship is the opposite of questioning or doubting. Doubt is not the opposite of faith, unbelief is. Unbelief is when we get to the point where we refuse to ask questions, to challenge, to wrestle with truth. Only then is faith impossible.

So it is that only by touching the Divine as Thomas did, only by putting truth to the test, only by questioning and challenging do we come to the place where we can truly worship. As Jacob the Patriarch discovered, we are invited to wrestle even with God Himself. God welcomes our questions, our arguments, our anger even. Only our stony or indifferent silence does He reject.

For to worship God means that we cast aside every pretender to the throne, we throw down every idol and false god and we come to terms with who the true God really is. Then and only then do we truly begin to worship our Maker.