The Search for Faith

“[W]hen the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

The answer to this question matters. God loves faith, not least because it is faith that produces every work which pleases him.

Hebrews 11 catalogs a variety of wonderful things faith does in the lives of believers, all of which delight the heart of God.

College / University Survival Guide [Part 3]

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College / University Survival Guide [Part 2]

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College / University Survival Guide [Part 1]

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Faith of the Gospel

“Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God.”

These “opponents” were primarily Jews.

Sailing the High Seas

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Too Hot to Handle: When We ALL Get to Heaven

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Anonymous Asks (36)

“How can we make our faith stronger?”

On its own, the word “faith” has no real content. It simply means “belief”. People believe all kinds of things, some of them very strongly indeed, but the intensity of their belief does not make those beliefs true.

Thus it is necessary to ask the question, “Faith in what exactly?”

Faith and Impatience

One of the major features of the middle chapters of Genesis is a plethora of good people trying to accomplish good things in the worst possible way.

Sarah trying to bring an heir into the world to fulfill the promises of God via the womb of her Egyptian servant. Her husband Abraham going along, though it means infidelity to his own wife. Scripture doesn’t tell us whether Hagar was an especially attractive woman, so let’s give the patriarch the benefit of the doubt and just say he unwisely capitulated to Sarah’s poorly-thought-out plan rather than to something less honorable, like garden-variety male lust.

Then we come to Rebekah.

Anonymous Asks (31)

“How do I know I’m saved?”

This is a question which occurs to nearly every young believer at one point or another. Some struggle with it more than others.

If you’ve run your question by fellow Christians, someone has probably quoted you Romans 10:9: “[I]f you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Anonymous Asks (22)

“What if I have doubts about my faith? What should I do?”

I’m going to try to answer this in a very general way, since you don’t specify any particular issue that is troubling you.

I like to think of faith as that not-quite-quantifiable thing that bridges the gap between the evidence I already have in front of me and my will to act on that evidence. That’s not a theological definition, but it works for me. Properly understood, the biblical definition, “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” seems to me to amount to much the same thing.

Reverse Engineering the Faith

“I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”

Conservative scholars generally date the book of Jude to between A.D. 66 and 90. In his book The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, Frank Viola opts for a likely date of A.D. 68. William MacDonald uses internal evidence to place authorship between A.D. 67 and 70. I have not come across much that would incline me to argue with either man.

All these estimates place Jude as one of the very last books of the New Testament to be written and distributed to the first century churches.

What Kind of Disciples Are You Making?

God tests men’s faith. Women’s too. It’s what he does.

Why? Because faith is hugely important to him. It might be the most important thing of all. As scripture tells us, “without faith it is impossible to please him.”

Impossible. Not difficult, very difficult or in the 99th percentile of difficulty. Completely impossible. It cannot be done. Faith is critical to any relationship with God.

An Iceberg in the Gulf of Mexico

I sat in an office meeting last Saturday morning listening to my fellow managers discuss internal company changes that were, to everyone there, more than a little disconcerting. The afternoon shift supervisor had a clear note of panic in his tone as he anticipated what personnel moves upper management might be contemplating.

Understandably. Nice guy, but he’s got a doctorate in something esoteric that’s all but useless in the real world and I’m quite sure hasn’t the slightest idea what he’ll do if he’s suddenly unemployed.

I’m not about to tell you that I’m a whole lot better qualified myself, or that looking for another job has any great appeal to me. In fact, there are hundreds of thousands, and I suspect millions, all across North America who are staring down similar situations these days.

It’s not just potential unemployment that’s scary, is it.

Into the Crucible

“The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.”

If for some reason you needed to melt gold at home, you could actually do it with an acetylene torch, assuming you have the right sort of container to melt gold in. Gold becomes liquid at around 1,943°F (1,064°C). Once you’ve tried melting gold, silver is comparatively easy, melting between 1,640 and 1,762°F (893-961°C).

The process by which precious metals are refined and purified is intense. Going from solid to liquid can’t be much fun either. If we are to learn anything from the first two clauses of this verse, it is that our Father does not bring us to the place of crisis trivially, nor does he do it in order to leave us as he found us.

Anonymous Asks (10)

“How can we know that God is actually real?”

That’s an interesting question, and one that can be approached from a number of angles. The most obvious angle is scientific knowledge. Can we prove in a lab that God exists? Of course not. We can look into a microscope or up into a night sky and witness all kinds of evidence that points to a Creator, but can we demonstrate his existence from these things with 100% certainty to someone who doesn’t believe?

No, we should probably concede that we can’t.

Too Hot to Handle: Atheists in Foxholes

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Faith of the Calvinists

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Theism and the Skeptics [Part 2]

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Anonymous Asks (6)

“How do you reconcile Ephesians 2:8-9 with James 2:24?”

Well, let’s take a crack at that. First, the apostle Paul in Ephesians:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Then James:

“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”

I’m going to assume the bone of contention here is the two phrases “saved through FAITH” (i.e., not as a result of works) and “justified by WORKS”. These statements appear to be contradictory.

But are they?

Too Hot to Handle: The Christian Nation

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

In America is not a Christian nation: The dark capitalist roots of our country’s most destructive myth, Andrew Aghapour quizzes Princeton professor Kevin Kruse about the “Christian nation myth”.

As with most things in the media these days, the title is a bit sensationalist and the substance of the article a little less dramatic. Basically, it’s what it purports to be: the assertion that America is not and never has been a Christian nation, with a bit of window dressing that suggests a mini-conspiracy by businessmen and evangelicals to spread that myth.

Tom: Immanuel Can, I think we can agree that America is demonstrably not a Christian nation today. Has it ever been?

Theism and the Skeptics [Part 1]

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On the Supposed Misuse of the Old Testament

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That Sinking Feeling

Nope, not thinking about Peter.

In Luke’s gospel we read about the Lord conferring to his twelve disciples power and authority over all demons and diseases. Thus equipped, he then sends them out to heal and proclaim the kingdom of God. Upon their return the disciples report to him all that they have done, which suggests at least a moderate degree of success in their mission.

All the Time You Need

“Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.”

How long does it take to get saved?

Some people spend their whole lives working at it. They go to church, they provide for their families, they confess their sins, they contribute to religious causes, they try to treat people well, they “do unto others”. Some follow laws and religious regulations year after year.

But it’s not a trick question, nor a particularly complicated one.

On the Mount (17)

It takes courage to stand up and pray in public if you’re shy by nature, but not that much courage; maybe only a little more than it takes to spill your guts on Facebook or Twitter. Judging by the number of people doing that, it must feel pretty good. And of course if you’re the type of person who loves to be the centre of attention, it doesn’t take any courage at all to pray in public. It’s like swimming to a duck.

It certainly doesn’t require faith.

On the Mount (9)

The website Judaism 101 lists every one of the 613 Mitzvot, or commandments of the Law traditionally recognized by the rabbis from Genesis through Deuteronomy. If you’re planning on trying to keep them all (an undertaking I don’t recommend), it’s quite a daunting read.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is first baptized by John, then tempted in the wilderness by the devil. On the heels of successfully frustrating Satan, the Lord begins his ministry formally with the declaration “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and follows it with the “good news of the kingdom” preached in the synagogues and streets of Galilean towns and villages and accompanied everywhere by miraculous works that authenticate his message.

There Is No ‘Plan B’

I have a friend who regularly sends me emails full of ‘Christian’ content, mostly the type of cookie-cutter platitudes and cheesy, sentimental anecdotes popular on social media. One or two have actually been pretty decent. I have no idea where he finds them all.

I assume he sends them my way because he knows I’m a Christian and expects that they’d be of interest to me in the same way that, say, NHL trade rumours interest a hockey fan, or an article on Jeff Tweedy may interest a fan of the band Wilco. It’s a nice gesture on his part.

What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (7)

Hands up if you’ve figured out Marshall Brain’s agenda.

First clue: he’s plugging a book entitled God is Imaginary. Second: a lengthy post asking “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?”

Yeah, I thought so too. But what interests me is the passage of scripture from which Brain starts his anti-God ramble, because there’s no logical way to get from there to where he ends up.

The Reset Button

“Get behind me, Satan,” said the Lord Jesus to an entirely earnest Peter.

It sounds a little unkind, but Peter was in need of serious correction. In that moment he was thinking naturally rather than spiritually: all his standard defaults had kicked in. In the realm of ordinary human logic, death and suffering are things to be avoided under virtually every circumstance.

Peter could not conceive of any higher good such things might make possible.

When to Stop

Scientists who subscribe to the the Big Bang Theory seem compelled to seek out some earlier cause for each event in their chain. Everything happens, they reason, because something else happened first. So, for instance, this astronomer argues that the “highly concentrated ball of matter” from which the universe is supposed to have begun was the product of decaying photons.

We might try to frame this sort of argument in the language of the book of Hebrews by saying this: something “visible” (in this example, light) eventually gave rise to “what is seen” (in this case, matter).

But obviously the writer of Hebrews would disagree with that formulation.

Too Hot to Handle: Eternal Insecurity

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I Got No Strings (Among Other Things)

In her book Sacred Psychology of Change: Life as Voyage of Transformation, Marilyn Barrick writes this:

“As you may remember, the wood carver, Geppetto, gazes out his window at the starry heavens above and wishes upon a star that the puppet, Pinocchio, he has carved and painted might be a real boy. His words have been echoed by children ever since, ‘Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.’ ”

Pinocchio being a children’s story, Geppetto eventually gets his wish, though not without a fair bit of grief along the way.

In the real world getting our wishes is not so common.

Big Questions and the Loss of Faith

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What’s Behind Faith?

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Life in Suspended Animation

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Double Jeopardy

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The Race Metaphor

Yesterday I talked a little bit about images and figurative language in scripture. I think sometimes we can end up reading more into a Bible metaphor or simile than the Spirit of God ever intended. Or we get caught up in the details of the picture itself and fail to grasp the spiritual reality it is meant to depict.

The writer to the Hebrews talks about running a race:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us …”

Here the writer and his original Hebrew audience (that’s the “we”; the rest of us are simply reading someone else’s mail) are compared to men and women running a race. We do well to ask ourselves two questions. Firstly, what is this “race” that is to be run? Secondly, what are the specific intended points of agreement between running and whatever it is this “race” is intended to typify?

Faith’s Got Legs

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Acts of Faith That Aren’t

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Faith, Inc.

“But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”

A while back, I read a piece written by a fellow believer on the subject of finding peace in the quest to live one’s life in the will of God. I’d link to it but it has not yet been published. A major theme of his paper was that both the peace of God and the will of God are often found corporately rather than individually; that it was not intended that we live our Christian lives in isolation from other believers, but rather that we discover God’s will together through submission to one another and to him.

Corporate, eh? Interesting idea, and almost surely not one prompted by the spirit of the age in which we currently live.

Sound and Silence (or Banishing the Banshee)

I have a neighbour that screams like a banshee — or at least she used to. She doesn’t anymore, and herein lies a tale.

Like many families, we live in a semi-detached house with nothing more than a cinder-block partition and a little ancient insulation separating us from our neighbours. You can’t hear everything that occurs on the other side of the party wall, but you can hear plenty, especially when voices are raised.

We heard plenty. Regularly. Our neighbour made sure of it.

The Confidence to Command

“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things [what you will eat, what you will drink, what you will put on] will be added to you.”

“If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.”

Joel Osteen notwithstanding, there is no scriptural correlation between earthly prosperity and living according to the will of God. None. Bet the house on it — if you can afford one.

Better, if you’re just starting out in the service of God, bet your next fifty years or so.

The Uncompassionate Christ

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

“… and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?” … And he did not do many mighty works there.”

You see the problem, of course. A mere four chapters on in our narrative, the “compassionate” Jesus of Matthew 9 by-and-large withholds the benefit of his healing powers from the very people with whom he grew up.

What are we to make of this?

Forever Doesn’t Mean Forever Anymore

Universalists are a funny bunch. They’d like everyone, no matter how willfully and resolutely horrible, to be saved in the end. Not a bad desire, in one sense. It certainly appears a loving and even-handed approach, provided we don’t apply a microscope to it and examine its implications too carefully.

So universalists read scripture to conform with their fantasy, redefining words as necessary and explaining the meaning of difficult verses in what seem to me to be very unnatural ways.

Thing is, they’re not always wrong.

Sailing the High Seas

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Myth, Allegory, Metaphor

Tim Challies has a few relevant queries about the way theistic evolutionists allow their scientific opinions to trump scripture:

1. If the description of the creation of the world is either just a vague metaphor for what actually happened or perhaps some kind of allegory, where do we determine that historical narrative actually begins?

My comments: The can of worms we open when we allegorize the creation narrative is quite a bit bigger than we may think.

The Commentariat Speaks (2)

Here’s an interesting idea: a religion that fits the people. An anonymous commenter says:

“Christendom is cancer. Pure and evil cancer. It is not a religion of white people. It is an Arabian religion which was imported. There was a fantastic interview with a Swedish woman on Red Ice Radio talking about the old gods and how they fit Sweden better because they gave role models to the people: a mother goddess, a warrior god and so forth. Christianity gives us a father figure and nothing else.”

Yes, you did read that correctly.

Too Hot to Handle: Faith in the Crosshairs

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Making Sure

People who don’t think a genuine believer in Jesus Christ belongs irrevocably to him use a variety of verses to support their claim that it is possible to be saved and then lose your salvation.

This isn’t a verse I’m used to seeing used that way:

“Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.”

The usual suspects are full of catchy expressions like “eternal sin”, “sin that leads to death” or even “impossible to restore them again to repentance”. Separate such phrases from their contexts and it is possible to become quite confused and concerned about the permanence of salvation.