Examined Christian Faith 'Faith part 3' 3.12 What is Christainity

There are certain things about Christianity that in all honestly can only be understood from the outside, from those who are not Christians. However there are a great many things that cannot be understood until after you have traveled a certain distance along the Christian road.  These things are like directions on a map, directions on how to deal with particular intersections, and obstacles on your journey; and they do not make any sense until you have reached those places in your journey.  This may be one of those places, Faith in the second sense that I previously alluded to, that higher sense of Faith.

I mentioned in my previous post that Faith in this sense can only arise after a person has tried his or her best to practice Christian virtues and come to the same realization that we all come to… that we failed.  Then realizes that even if he or she could have succeeded they would only have been giving back to God what was already His.  As we in this culture tend to relate things to financial worth, the other way to describe this realization is to discover that you are bankrupt.   Before I go any further this would seem a good place to once again remind you that what God cares about is not ‘exactly’ our actions.  What He cares about is that we should become creatures of a certain quality – the kind of creatures He intended us to be – Creatures that are related to Him in a certain way.  

When I said “discovered” in the previous paragraph, I mean really DISCOVERED; not something as simple as a parrot learning to repeat a word.  Any child, if they are given a certain religious education will soon learn to say that we have nothing to offer to god that is not already His own and that we find ourselves failing to offer even that, without holding something back.  No I am talking about really discovering by experience that you are bankrupt is the truth.

We cannot in that sense discover our failure to keep god’s law except by trying to do so with everything that we have (and then failing).  Unless you really try, there will always be something in the back of your mind whispering that if we try harder the next time we will succeed in being completely good .   Thus in one sense the road back to God is one of moral effort, of trying harder and harder; but in another sense it is a road of not trying that is going to bring us home.   All of which if you have honestly tried, brings you to the point where you throw up your hands in despair and turn to God and say “I can not do this, you must do this, I am leaving this up to you”. 

I know that the words "leave it up to God” can and is frequently misunderstood; but the sense in which a Christian leaves it to God is when you put all your trust in Christ, that Christ will somehow share with you the perfect human obedience which Christ carried out from birth to Crucifixion.  That Christ will make you the person more like Himself, that He will share his “sonship” with you.  In a sense the entire Christian life consists in accepting this remarkable offer; that Christ offers something for nothing, more than that, He offers everything for nothing.   The difficultly is reaching the point of recognizing that all we have done and can do is nothing. 

To Trust Him means of course trying to do all that He says.  Only a fool or a liar would say that they trusted a person yet refused to take His advice.  Thus if you really have handed your life over to Christ, it follows that you are trying to obey Him.  Trying in a new, less worried way.  Not doing things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already.  Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for you, rather wanting to act in a certain manner because a first faint glimmer of heaven is already inside you.  

A serious moral effort is the only thing that will bring you to the point where you throw in the towel.  Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point and out of that Faith in Him, good actions must inevitably come.   There are however two different views of this truth that Christians have debated over the years, the first is that “Good actions are all that matters, and by extension the best good action is charity.  The best type of charity is giving money, so just hand over $1,000 or $1,000,000 (depending on how deep your pockets are) and you are in good standing.    My answer to that nonsense is that good actions done for that motive, done with the idea that Heaven can be bought  (by what ever action) would not be a good action at all, only a business transaction.

The other view is one that I hear frequently (perhaps more frequently because I do not have $1,000 yet alone $1,000,000) is that “faith is all that matters”.  Consequently, if you have faith (at least proclaimed that you do) it doesn’t matter what you do.  Sin away, have a great time and Christ will see that it makes no difference in the end, that by faith you have been given immunity.   My answer to that pile of rubbish is that, if what you call ‘faith’ in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what He says, then it is not Faith at all – not faith or trust in Him, rather simply an intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him.  

The Bible is of course has the final word on the matter, and seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things together in one astonishing sentence.  The first half is ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” – which looks as if everything depended on you and your good actions; however the second half reads ‘For it is God who worketh in you” Philippians 2:12-13 – which looks as if God did everything and you did nothing.  I am afraid that is the sort of thing we run up against in Christianity.  I am perplexed, but not surprised.  I personally am not certain that the human language can express the idea, as God is not just one part, of the equation; He is not either inside you or outside you, He is inside you as well as outside you.   In an attempt to express the idea, different churches say different things, however you will find that even those who insist most strongly in the importance of good actions tell you that you need Faith, and those who insist most strongly on Faith also tell you to do good actions.   That is as far as I am prepared to go with it.  

I do think however that all Christians will agree with me that at first Christianity seems to be all about morality, all about duties, rules, guilt and virtue, yet if you let it, it leads you out of all of that into something beyond.   It leads you to glimpse a place where everyone is filled with what we call goodness, yet goodness is not called anything and it is not though of there, but instead everyone is focused on the source from which it comes.   

Faith, no one said it would be easy. 

 Previous Post in this series "Faith part 2"

Examined Christian Faith 'Faith part 2' 3.11 What is Christainity

Originally I was going to cover the topic of faith in two posts, however it has occurred to me that the only way to do that would be to write an extremely long second post as the second level or sense of faith is probably the most difficult subject matter I will have tackled in this series.  So perhaps it would be best if I set the table first and before we attempt to digest it.  Some time back in this series I touched on the matter of humility, and that the first step towards achieving it was to realize that you are proud.  If that is our starting point then the next step would be to seriously attempt to practice Christine virtues.  Not for a day or two, not even a week, because just about anyone can do so for a week or so, rather try two months, or even just one.  Because by then you will have failed miserably at it and quite probably fallen lower then your original starting point.  It is here that a person discovers some truth about themselves.  

The undeniable truth is that no one knows just how bad he or she is until they have tried with all their might to be good.   There seems to be a body of thought running amok in this country that god people do not know what temptation means.   Try the above experiment and you will quickly realize what a lie that is. 

Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.  You do not know how strong the current in a river is by swimming with it, you must swim against it to understand its power.   You never know how strong a bully is until you decide to fight him.   A person who gives in to temptation after 10 minutes can in no way comprehend what it would have been like an hour or two later.  That is why bad people (or more politically correct, good people who do bad things) know very little about badness.  They have chosen to live a sheltered life of always giving in to temptation.  You will never find out the strength of the evil impulses in yourself until you try to fight them; and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation is also the only one who knows to the full and final extent what temptation means. 

The main thing that we learn from making a serious attempt to practice Christian virtues is that WE FAIL.  I think everyone who has a vague belief in God, has the idea of an exam, or a bargain (God if... then I will…); however one quickly learns that he or she will always fail that exam (God does not grade on a curve).   We are simply incapable of acing the test; there is simply nothing that we can do that would enable us to put God in our debt.  If you still have that idea floating around in your head, I encourage you to try to practice all the Christian virtues for a month or two that should be about 4 to 8 weeks longer than needed to blow the idea into bits.   Some when they realize this thinks that Christianity is a failure and give up, for some reason they seem to think that God is very simple minded.   In fact one of the things Christianity is designed to do is to blow that idea up.  God is waiting for the moment that you realize that there is no way you will ever earn a passing grade on this exam; there is nothing you can do that will put him into your debt. 

It is only after you realize this that you make another discovery.  Everything you have, every faculty you possess – your ability to think, move, feel, see, smell, taste, everything has been given to you by God.  Even if you devoted every second of every day of your entire life to exclusively serve Him you could not give him anything that was not already His.  As it is Christmas time, the next time you are doing something for God or giving something to God, think of it like this; Think back to when you were a small child and you wanted to get your father a present for Christmas, you approach your dad and ask “Daddy, would you give me $10 to buy you a Christmas gift with?”  Of course your father does, and he is pleased with the gift that you give him.  It is all very nice and touching, but only an idiot would think that your father is ahead $10 on the gift.  

When you have made these two discoveries then and only then can God really get to work within you.  If is after this that your real life begins.  Now that you are at last fully awake, now you are ready to examine faith in the second sense. 

Previous Post in this series 'Faith part 1" 

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Is it an M or a W - A Christian view

I was reminded yesterday that life is filled with twists and turns, ups and downs, mountaintops and the darkest of valleys, joy and despair.  But no matter what comes our way, God has promised His children that He will allow nothing to pass through his fingers, that you will be unable to bear.  His promise is in Romans 8:28. "We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose".

By focusing on the moment, the here and now, we frequently forget, that God views our lives differently then we do.  Where we see a W, He sees an M; it is simply a matter of perspective.  Those fleeting moments in life that we think of as our finest, our grandest, our best, the ones that we desire to cling onto, those that we cherish, those that glorify our life; and ourselves, our mountaintops if you will, are probably viewed differently in heaven, they may well in fact be our deepest valleys.

Rather it is in our dark days, our M’s, those times when we have entered a valley so deep that it appears to be a bottomless abyss. When you are made to bear the unbearable, to endure the unimaginable, when dreams and lives are crushed, when all that you are and all that you have is lost, when at last faith and hope in yourself is lost; it is then in God’s eyes that you stand on the pinnacle of your finest moment, your W, when all you have left, is your faith in Him and that He has not forgotten nor abandoned you.  Faith untested is not faith.

It is in this split-second, this blink of the eye that you fully come to “Faith”.  In complete faith you accept that He will work together for good those who love Him, and that ultimately, when you get to heaven, you will see the greater good that He brought despite your suffering.  “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God”. Ephesians 2:8-9

A good man was called home yesterday, a man who had his share of M’s in this life; but I know that now that he is in heaven he realizes they were W’s; just as God always knew they were.  Well done Clayton, well done. So in your own quest to answer the question 'What is Christianity" consider if it is a M or a W.