Have Faith In God

And Jesus answered them, Have faith in God. -- Mark 11:22

My wife used to work as an administrative assistant for a pastor in a "Word of Faith" church.  It was quite a prominent ministry, especially around Dallas.  They were nice people, sincere people.  They were not trying to delude anyone.  Some of us -- not necessarily me -- have a tendency when dealing with nice, sincere people to think that there must be something to what they say, and what they believe.  Mormons are like this.  I have never met a Mormon I didn't like.  I'm not as harsh as some in that I consider them to be Christians, in general, especially as they have evolved over the years.  Still, I think the Book of Mormon has roughly the same level of inspiration as Treasure Island, though it's not as well written.  It doesn't mean Mormons aren't sincere. 

So, too, with the Word of Faith.  The reason I bring this up is because my wife was on the subject recently having listened to a minister whom she respects speak against some of these doctrines.  Her argument was that, working in that ministry where she did, she had been witness to quite literally hundreds of people who had their lives turned around by messages from that leader.  My response was that positive thinking is better than negative thinking, and that, if a person is motivated to get up, keep trying, and not quit, more times than not, things will work out. 

Again, I'm not saying the people involved are not or were not Christians or that their intent in any way was to fool people.  I've read E.W. Kenyon's books.  Identification is an excellent book.  I've lost my copy and would love to find another one.  It's very insightful.  The problem is that we are always treading a fine line.  We are always dealing in paradoxes.  It's very easy to get tangled up in language and terminology.  The truth, as I said a couple of days ago, is ineffable.  Just because something moves us toward the truth doesn't mean it encapsulates the whole truth.  Just because something is true doesn't mean it captures the Absolute. 

There's nothing  "wrong" with saying, Have a good attitude.  Don't let troubles get you down.  Don't give up.  That's encouragement.  In Acts 4:36, we read about a Cyprian Levite named Joseph.  We don't know him by that name but by his nickname -- Barnabas, which means "son of encouragement".  When David's men were about to stone him because their families and possessions had been taken by Amalekite raiders, David was distressed but he "encouraged himself" or "strengthened himself" in the Lord (1 Samuel 30:6).  Sometimes getting some courage in you is exactly what you need. 

But that isn't the Gospel.  You can be a stone-cold, hell-bound, devil-worshiping, dope-shooting, unrepentant pervert, yet wake up one morning, realize your lifestyle is destructive and that you are an abject failure.  You can buy some DVDs off public television or download some positive thinking podcasts, read some books, get your MBA, put on a suit, and become CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  You are now a hell-bound, unrepentant, devil-worshiping, successful pervert.  

The foundational text for so many Word of Faith proponents is that passage in Mark 11 where Jesus curses the fig tree.  Some will twist in a marginal reading to turn the Lord's initial declaration from "Have faith in God" to "Have faith of God" to a completely unjustifiable "Have the God-kind of faith".  Then we go into "you can have what you say". 

What it appears to me that Jesus means is that, as He says elsewhere, "out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks."  Or, as Hebrews 11:1 famously says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."  You know something is true.  You do not convince yourself any more than Abraham convinced himself that he was going to have a son at 100 with his 90-year-old wife. 

Who convinced him?

 I will let Andrew Murray carry on from a reprint called Jesus Himself.  I have inserted some breaks to make it a little more readable for those of us born after 1893:

It is by faith. We sometimes speak of faith as trust, and it is a very helpful thing to tell men that faith is trust: but when people say, as they sometimes do, that it is nothing else but trust, that is not the case. It is a far wider word than trust. It is by faith that I learn to know the invisible One, the invisible God, and that I see Him.

Faith is my spiritual eye-sight for the unseen and heavenly. You often try hard to trust God, and you fail. Why? Because you have not taken time first to see God. How can you trust God fully until you have met Him and known Him?

You ask, "Where ought I to begin?" You ought to begin with first believing; with presenting yourself before this God in the attitude of silent worship, and asking Him to let a sense of His greatness and His presence come upon you.

You must ask Him to let your heart be covered over with his holy presence. You must seek to realize in your heart the presence of an Almighty and all-loving God, an unspeakably loving God.

Take time to worship Him as the omnipotent God, to feel that the very power that created the world, the very power that raised Jesus from the dead, is at this moment working in your heart.

We do not experience it because we do not believe. We must take time to believe.

Jesus says, "Oh, my child, shut your eyes to the world, and shut out of your heart all these thoughts about religion, and begin to believe in God Himself."

That is the first article of the Creed--"I believe in God."

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.

Fixing to have faith

Jesus replied to them, “Have faith in God.” – Mark 11:22

For the last couple of weeks I have been meaning to get around to thinking about having faith, but other stuff keeps coming up. I don’t have any theological axes to grind because I use a chainsaw which will stay sharp for quite a while if you don’t run it in the ground. I will point out that if you don’t have a real job, any integrity, or any fear of God, there is good money to be made in the various repackaged models of good old “mind science”. From Deepak to Dyer to Jesse Duplantis, thinking good thoughts and speaking faith obviously works because all these guys are millionaires.

If you don’t know Jesse Duplantis, he is a Charismatic preacher from New Orleans – he used to be strictly an evangelist, but I think he pastors his own church down there now as well. He’s a funny guy, tells lots of jokes and funny stories, and, as far as I know he is a decent and moral man. He is a “faith preacher” in the tradition of Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and many others. A few years ago, Brother Duplantis decided he needed his own plane to fly around and preach the prosperity gospel. It was a jet, and I think the price tag was around $8 million.

Brother Jesse has a half-hour program that he airs on the Christian networks as well as local stations around the country. He has a substantial audience in addition to all of his preaching in large churches, campmeetings, and other venues. The man is gifted, and he has worked for years to achieve the success he has. I have no quarrel with him at any level except to point out that what works for Reverend Duplantis may not be the norm.

When he decided he needed a new plane, he addressed it on his program. He explained that he needed eight thousand viewers – certainly a minority of his audience – to send $1000 each to buy his jet. He said he was using his faith and believing for this to be done. Now anyone who listens to and enjoys Reverend Duplantis or benefits from his teaching and ministry is free to support him financially. I’d much rather see money go to Brother Jesse than to Uncle Sam. I wondered, though, if Jesse is “believing God” for his $8 million why he bothered to mention the specifics on his television program. I don’t have a television program or a radio program, and my blog is pretty secretive, too. If you or I need to “believe God” for a new jet or even a new Corvette, our options are a little more limited. We’re pretty much stuck “believing God for” whatever and taking care of it ourselves.

Again, I have no quarrel with Jesse Duplantis or any of the rest I mentioned. I almost always listen to Joel Osteen when I run across his program on TV, just because he’s positive and uplifting. My quarrel is with the concept expressed by the phrase “believing for”, or “have faith that” as prosperity preachers use it.

The Biblical concept of faith is never separated from the object. When the Disciples wondered at the cursing of the fig tree in Mark 11, Jesus begins His explanation by saying, “Have faith IN God.” One of the most egregious wrongs done by the Word of Faith movement was that for many years they took a marginal reading of the Lord’s words, which could be read as “have faith of God”-- and turned it into “have the God-kind of faith”. As I have to repeat often, I am no Greek scholar, but I know there is no accepted translation of the New Testament that renders that statement in that way.

When Jesus did the miraculous for people, He sometimes questioned them in this manner: Do you believe I can do this? Notice, He is asking them, in essence, if they believe in Him. I do not recall a single instance in the New Testament where anyone was asked to “have faith for” or “believe for” anything. When Peter and John healed a crippled man in the Gate Beautiful of the temple, Peter declared, “By faith in His name, His name has made this man strong …”.

Not faith for; faith IN.

I mentioned this somewhere the other day, that I believe everybody has faith. Everybody believes in some stuff. The critical thing is not the fact that we have faith but what we have faith in. For example, at the moment, a certain percentage of the population has faith in the government. I, too, have faith in government, but my faith is mainly that government will take my money, waste 70% of it and use the other 30% to collect more money from me. Outside of that, I’ve never seen government do much worthwhile.

Some folks believe in themselves. Their theme song is, “It’s a small world after all.”

The virtue, I repeat, is in the object of faith rather than the faith itself. Faith in God will get you through the times when you can’t always get what you want. I don’t just “believe God” to pull me out of the ditch. I believe in the goodness of God which may leave me in the ditch long enough for me not to get hit by a freight train.

Whether my need is forgiveness, or the power to forgive, grace or mercy, light, strength, wisdom, patience (which I need right now), holiness, or just plain help, I will put my faith in the God who provides. I put my faith in the Lord, not in positive confessions or a positive mental attitude. I don’t trust in my ability to visualize or the consistency of my affirmations, but I trust in the Lord, the One who knows what I need. He is the One who will never fail me, and all He asks is that I trust Him.