Feeble faith

By Charlotte Maltés

Feeble Faith

Our family loves playing games. 

If while reading that you pictured a perfect family in perfect harmony, well I’m sorry to burst your bubble. We are a happy, fun loving family but things can get a little crazy on game night. One of our favorites is Jenga. We’re all super careful each turn we get to remove a wooden block from the narrow column to place it back on top without making it tumble. 

All of us… except for Sara. 

The youngest member of our clan goes right in. Watching her play is not for the faint of heart. Fearless, she just goes for it and every time we think her dive in method will fail, to our surprise, it does not. 

This got me thinking.

What if we approached faith and the gospel the same way Sara does Jenga? 

What if we applied the same go for it formula instead of treating it like a delicate structure ready to fall at the slightest threat?  What if we went all out with our faith? 

Christians can be very thin-skinned.  I’m sorry, but it’s true. We get easily offended and rather than providing logical, love driven responses and reason for our faith, we let fear and insecurity inspire vengeful witch-hunts. Some, behind the pretense of “holy zeal”, aim cannons at their own brothers and sisters, giving way to an unholy Civil war. 

Now, I love God and I do believe in standing up for what is right and true. However, there is something important we keep forgetting. Paul defines the gospel in Romans 1 as power of God for salvation. This is HUGE! Yet, many times we find ourselves protecting it as if it were a baby bird. 

The gospel is power. 

Not just any power. Consider the source, God. Consider the result, salvation. There is nothing on earth or beyond that can compete with or compare to it. If we truly believe the gospel is life changing power, then trying to contain it would be as absurd as attempting to catch lighting in a bottle, and keeping it to ourselves would be most selfish. Cruel even, like finding a cure to COVID-19 and telling no one. 

We don’t defend the gospel. In any case, it defends us. 

God is not searching for avengers; he is looking for servants. People who understand that faith is not frail. It is a force to be reckoned with. A beautiful force, a perfect storm of love, compassion, obedience, truth and trust. 

I believe the reason this take on the gospel might be a struggle for some of us is that we’re scared. Afraid of anything that might challenge or attack the very foundations of our faith. Terrified of being put to shame, of not having the correct answers to all the questions, of being unable to properly back up our convictions. Scared of repercussions and implications to our reputations and our lifestyles. Simply put, we don’t want to look stupid.

In any case, the reality of the matter is that any part of our belief system that can easily come down when under pressure should probably not be part of it in the first place. Whatever is built on the rock will prevail, what is built on sand will come down (Mat 7:24). Whatever comes out of us listening and obeying Jesus will be a sturdy solid product. What comes out of listening to Jesus but following our own desires and ideas of how we think things should be, sooner or later will come crashing down.

At times the pieces falling off might not even be bad things. They served as wedges helping us at one point in our journey understand the mystery of faith a little better. Things that would help us hold our structure in place until it got sturdy enough. Maybe it is time we go back to our towers and give it a good shake. Read a book by an author with a different perspective. Engage in conversation with your agnostic neighbor. Listen to a controversial podcast. Go out there and put your faith to the test. See what happens. Listen and pay attention to how you feel, mind your response, dissect your energy. Run a diagnostic of your faith. This will help us discover what parts are feeble and need to be reinforced or removed entirely. 

This is not a one-person job. It requires teamwork because it is not only about us. No one can construct a whole building by themselves and you can’t play Jenga alone. Well, you can but is weird and not much fun. The way I live my faith affects others and should make an impact on the world. 

Faith is not a private matter.

If God adopted us as his children, then faith is a family affair. If he kept his family in the world, then that makes faith a public matter. NT Wright in his book Simply Jesus, when talking about what it truly means to bear witness puts it this way “we are not just telling about our private experiences, We are declaring things that, by their declaration, will change the way things are going.”   

Through open honest dialogue with the Spirit and with the community of faith we can keep in check. They too can help us identify which parts of our tower might be dispensable or have become disposable. At times we might even need encouragement while we let go of whatever we had been holding on to. 

This is how we grow. Growing can sometimes hurt. In the process we need to be gracious and remind ourselves that it is ok to be confronted, to feel uncomfortable as we come into our new findings. And if there is anything Jesus taught his followers is that in this new kingdom many times in order to win the biggest prize you must let go. 

Humility plays a major part here in recognizing we do not have all the answers. No one does. That no perspective or doctrinal theory is complete. We need to start praying uncomfortable prayers asking the Spirit to show us what prejudices might be hindering us in seeing, ourselves, God, others and life the way we should, which parts of our tower might be leaning the wrong way. 

Why is this important? Why does the way we understand and live out our faith matter? 

It matters because God is building his Church, He is building his kingdom. He is calling us to participate, but we cannot do this on our own terms while following our own patterns or designs. Bringing our own lopsided versions of the gospel to the mix will simply not do. His Kingdom, his rules. Whatever he says goes. And this begins in us and with us. When God is the architect, beauty and functionality are inevitable, so we need to get with the program and trust the process.

The game is in progress, the pieces are in place. 

We’re up. 

So, what will it be? Will we play it safe holding on to what makes us comfortable and feel in control? Or will we do as Sara and just go for it, trusting the power of God and his gospel will be there to sustain us and back us up? 

Only we can decide how to play the game, how we live out our faith. We must remember, we only have this turn, this life on this side of heaven to do so. 

Let’s make it count.