Some thoughts on faith

Why do we expect so little from our faith? By “we”, I mean the vast majority of humanity. We treat faith like little more than a non-binding, guiding set of principles.

Take for instance, our beloved left coast and the Hollywood scene. People seemingly dance on the winds of the latest religious fad. Faith is worn like an Armani suit or a Gucci handbag. It’s used like a well-placed affair to drum up some publicity.

It’s not that they don’t “believe” in what they are saying. I’m certain some do, but their faith is only essential as long as it is convenient and meets their needs. Now, lest you think I have an extreme disdain for actors, let me point something out. I think this pattern of faith is only apparent in the famous precisely because they are famous. Their lives are lived under the constant scrutiny of their adoring public. The reality often is that their lives are but a microcosm of our own. We all tend to treat faith this way.

We shop at the Walmart of Religion and choose our belief systems like we’re putting together the components of an entertainment system. If we’re conservative we gravitate towards the fundamental. If we’re liberal we lean towards the indulgent. Most are somewhere in between and we choose a mix of components to build the belief system perfectly suited to our needs. We are all guilty of this. I say “guilty”, because as you have certainly figured out by now I find any such notion of faith a sad rendering of the real thing.

Faith should never be a search for what we find palatable, but for the truth of who God is and what God desires. My experience is that this rarely leads to a comfortable faith. The goal is not to find a god who thinks just like me, but for me to think just like God. For me, that means that I fully expect to be pushed, challenged, and admonished as well as encouraged, uplifted, and supported. This is all, of course, easier said than done. We all tend to seek out the places of comfort. So, how do we defend against this very human response?

Ironically, even as I rant about our consumeristic culture and its obsession with choice, I believe one of the keys to finding an authentic, uncompromising faith in God is a greater openness to the many expressions of faith. Let me try to be clear as to why I say this. Given the proclivity of humanity to meet one’s own desires and needs we need to constantly test our faith. I do not mean to suggest that we need to test God. The very nature of who God is, by most every definition, puts God beyond the scope of our testing. However, our understanding, our interpretation of who God is and what it means to believe in him needs to be constantly scrutinized. Otherwise, how are we to discern between what true faith is and what is human projection?

“Well, just read the Book”, you might say. Hmm, yes, yes, but don’t we have a tendency to read it, meaning the Bible, of course, through the very prejudiced lens of our own ideology. We tend to read into it what we want to get out of it. So, how do we overcome that flaw? Well, read the Bible, but read it all and understand that reading the Bible is never a “just read” proposition. Why? Because the true goal is not to read the Book, but to let God read us. We don’t interpret the Bible. Instead, our lives are interpreted in the light of God’s Word. Every conservative should feel the utter conflict of their desire for the clarity of the law with the ambiguity of God’s grace. Every liberal should feel the clash of their emphasis on tolerance with the uncompromising standards of God’s holiness. When we commit ourselves to this struggle and allow God to interpret us rather than satisfying our desire to interpret God, faith is born.