When Illusions Collide

… God … Who gives life to the dead and speaks of nonexistent things as if they already existed – Romans 4:17

I am getting around late today, and I have had way, way too much fun the last couple of days. I’m finishing up my paid labor and waiting somewhat patiently for eighteen tons of aggregate to be delivered. I will fill in the low spots in my expanded driveway and turn my wife’s flowerbeds white for winter. It’s kind of crazy to pay for rocks when I live on land that seems to be nearly as much rock as soil most of time, even in the uppermost layers. But it’s not sparkly white and uniform in size and appearance.

Rock is, or so it seemed to me growing up as a hillbilly, not only ubiquitous but about as real a thing as one encounters in life. Scramble up a bluff and take a seat on an outcropping of solid granite, or try to put a post in too close to a glade and it is easy to appreciate the relative immutability of rock. You can understand why the Holy Spirit would describe the Lord over and over as the Rock. Those old boys over there in Judea and points north were kind of like hillbillies themselves. When you said build on the rock to them, they knew what you meant.

There are people who read Romans 4:17 quoted above and understand it to mean that God operates by faith Himself. They say that God believes things into existence, and then they extrapolate to say that humans have the same capacity. From this understanding arise those Christians who call themselves “word of faith”, people who believe in books like The Secret, and various new age and positive thinking types.

I don’t believe there is anything wrong with thinking positively. It’s much better than thinking negatively. I do think that people can set themselves up for guilt and self-condemnation through flaky teaching about faith. One of the raccoon geniuses, Magnus Itland, provided me with some food for thought about the new agey types that think they can believe for all green lights as they drive. I wonder what would happen if two of them arrived at an intersection simultaneously? Would they both get yellows? But more importantly, if you don’t get green lights, does that mean you don’t have enough faith? When bad things happen in life, is it because you weren’t “speaking faith” sufficiently? Faith can become really problematic if we get things turned the wrong way. We have the right part, and we are trying to put it in the right location, but we have it going on backwards.

My understanding of Romans 4:17 looks at the larger context. Paul is not trying to tell us that God operates on faith just as we must. The point is that God can call things into being that at the moment do not exist in the natural world. Faith is trusting in the God who can do that. God doesn’t use faith anymore than He stops to “figure out” how He is going to accomplish something. Though He may, for our benefit, reason with us, He doesn’t have to reason to reach a conclusion or to solve a problem. Prior to the Incarnation, I don’t think God ever had a problem. He never needed a solution.

I always loved watching Ozzie Smith play shortstop, not even counting the backflips. Smith had no more idea where the ball was going when it came off the bat than anyone else, but if it came anywhere near him, he caught it. Sure, experience taught him to play in on some guys and back on others, crowd third a little on someone else, but there was no conscious calculation on a rocketing liner. God’s a lot like Ozzie – except that He can cover the entire infield and outfield from the pitcher’s mound -- not that anybody can get so much a loud foul if He doesn’t want them to. He doesn’t need to know where the ball is going. He can get there. Nothing is going to get down or get out of the park unless it’s part of the plan. I have free will to bunt or swing away, take a called strike or try to slap one through the gap. God can handle it.

The beauty of faith is not that I’m in control and can have or do whatever I want. It is that I’m resting on the Rock, on the solid, eternal, immutable goodness of God.