What is Faith, Really?

This should be a very short devotional. Because the answer to this is so self-evident that I should be able to simply say what it is and move on. However, in listening to atheist talk about faith, one would think of faith as some type of magical evidence machine that produces belief from nothing. That causes miracles to happen. They claim that having faith is the equivalent of replacing evidence. And they tend to derive that teaching from certain Christian groups, that do tend to teach this version of faith, usually based upon Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Substance of things hoped for? Huh? Evidence of things not seen? Appears to fall right in line with the atheist's assumptions.  But hold on. There is more to chapter 11 than verse 1. The author then goes on to list several examples to illustrate what is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. What do those multiple examples show? They show people having faith in someone that becomes the evidence of things not seen, and the substance of things hoped for.

In short, faith is not some magical answer to every "God of the gaps" issue that comes along, as atheist tend to portray it. That is the creating a straw man and knocking it over, though I'll grant that some Christian groups do teach faith in that manner. Rather, faith is the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen because of faith placed in a person, like God or Jesus. Because we have faith that they are who they say they are, we come to trust their words. The Bible, for one point.

I know what an atheist would say at this point. They would point out that there is little reason to put their faith in the Bible, or even in Jesus, and His belief in the Scriptures. They would point out that there is little reason to put one's faith in the Christian God over other competing gods, like Allah, the Jewish god, or even the multiple gods of Indian religion or of Greek/Roman mythology.

I could go through an apologetic here of why one should place their faith in Jesus, but that would take us a ways from the point of this short devotional. The point being that the evidence isn't missing, it is simply not pointing to a something, but a someone, namely, God. You either have faith in someone, that what they say is the truth or not, or you don't. Nor does it preclude the other person having some evidence upon which they place their faith in said person.

Because the average person does the same thing with science. Most people don't have the time and resources to do or read all the literature that is regularly put out by the scientific community. Most people will rely upon what science says; they place their faith in the scientist, And they do so based upon the data they have that science is right or wrong most of the time. Likewise, they base their faith in a certain god based upon the same data, whether in their experience it is the right decision or not.'

And while atheist will point to "errors" and bad morals by God, like the "approval" of slavery and the killing of children (they tend to take those out of context and view it from their secular world view and deem them "bad"). they totally ignore the opposite evidence that helps to verify it: That despite the "errors" they note, that the Bible, written by many people over many thousands of years has a consistent message: that despite our sin and fall from grace, we can be saved by Him through faith in Christ, who conquered death through death.

They would claim, in that regard, that to have faith in a God who feels it necessary to kill his son to atone for humanity's sins to be crazy. Of course, they tend to go with what they were taught in whatever church they grew up in, and not too many teach the more rational version of atonement being that due to the fall, we cannot stand in God's presence without experiencing Hell, That's why we can't see him directly. So, God sent his son in order to heal us of our fallen condition by defeating death, our sickness, through dying, going to Hades, and breaking down its gates since death could not hold the giver of life.

While I'm sure an atheist would still find problems with that explanation, it does address their concerns with the satisfaction theory, and additionally it has the benefit of being the original understanding of what the atonement is about.

Now, one's acceptance of the above would in part depend upon what you place your faith in. A) Me, and all those who have taught the same down through history, B) One's self, in your own logic and understanding, partial though it may be. Or you may place your faith in a certain group of scientist you admire, so if they suggest that a certain thing has been proven to be true, you'll tend to believe them before you've researched it or read all the papers on it, because you have faith that they have diligently done that work and have adequately assessed the conclusions. Why? Because you have experienced that in the past.

In other words, faith doesn't happen in a vacuum. It has reasons and experience of the person that causes them to have faith. This is why Christianity is often referred to as The Faith. Because it is placing our faith in Jesus Christ, in God. However misplaced a particular person may feel that faith is placed by someone, it doesn't happen apart from reason. It isn't an evidence from nothing.

Christianity isn't believed by faith in a something like the Bible, or by faith in a particular Church, rather it is because we have faith in a person, Jesus Christ, that what he says is true, that we believe things like the Bible. It's because we have faith in the person of Jesus Christ, that we believe it when He says that He is the Son of God.

That is what faith really is. Faith in the person of Jesus Christ: God. Everything else flows from that faith. Even as it does with the atheist.

What's the Point?

Herod's Sheep Gate

What if I told you that the point of getting "saved" was not to avoid going to Hell? Not even to go to Heaven. Those are by-products of obtaining salvation, but not their purpose and goal. Yet, that has been the popular focus of what they are about in much of American Evangelicalism beginning primarily in the 1800s with the revival camp meetings.

I mean, you'll hear people talk about salvation as an "insurance policy" to avoiding Hell. The whole focus on Johnathon Edwards' sermon, "Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God" was specifically to this point. And how many others have preached similar messages from the pulpits of many of our biggest churches and denominations? Sort of the carrot and the stick approach to evangelism. Carrot: you'll get to go to Heaven. Stick: you'll go to Hell if you don't.

Rather, that the whole point of salvation is to glorify God by becoming more like Him. We obtain salvation not to get that mansion in the great by-and-by, but to become one with God through Jesus Christ.

This point was brought home to me yesterday as my priest preached on John 5:1-16. This is the story of the man who had been paralyzed for 38 years, who waited by the Pool of Bathesda for an angle to stir up the water, and the first one in the water was healed. The only problem was this man was unable to move, at least very fast, and so someone else always got into the water before him. Jesus asks him if he wants to be healed, and so Jesus does, and the man picks up his pallet and walks out of the place.

Now I hear you asking, how on earth did you get from that to the point I'm making? No, this wasn't at all what the priest focused upon in this passage. Rather, my mind went down this rabbit hole. Because it struck me what the reaction of the spiritual leaders was to this event.

For you see, once the man picked up his pallet and began to walk out of the temple, some of the Pharisees began questioning the man saying that it was not legal to carry anything on the Sabbath. The man told them what had happened, and cast the blame upon Jesus in that He had told him to pick up his pallet and walk. As if this released the man from his responsibility, the concluding verse of this section of the story says:

And on account of this the Jews began to persecute Jesus, and were seeking to kill Him, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. (John 5:16 EMTV)

What struck me about this is that this man just gave them a wonderful testimony. That he'd been healed of an affliction he'd suffered from for 38 years! And all the Pharisees were concerned about was him carrying a pallet on the Sabbath? Really? And it was such a big deal that they began to find a way to kill Jesus for commanding him to carry it on the Sabbath?

Talk about missing the forest for the trees. What should have become a cause for celebration and rejoicing instead was morphed into a death threat. Horror of horrors! He carried a pallet on the Sabbath. We need to kill someone!

And that's when the thought struck me. We do the same thing as it concerns salvation. We've become so practically focused on salvation as a means to avoid Hell and gain Heaven, that we've missed the whole point of why we get saved in the first place. As if the whole point of killing Jesus was so I could gain Heaven and live in bliss. Rather, St. Paul puts it this way:

More than that I also consider all things to be loss, on account of the surpassing worth of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have sustained the loss of all things, and I consider them to be rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through faith * in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith; so as to know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if in some way I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Phil. 3:8-11 EMTV)

Paul sums up the Gospel message here. In verse 10 and 11 he gives the purpose of the Gospel. To know Jesus Christ, God the Son, in His suffering, His death, and the power of His resurrection, for the purpose of attaining, interestingly he says "somehow," the resurrection from the dead personally.

Now we know that everyone will have a resurrection from the dead, for there will still be a last judgment to go through. What St. Paul is talking about here is obtaining a resurrection from our spiritual death brought on by the fall of Adam. Yet it is through becoming one with Christ's sufferings, death, and resurrection that this is accomplished. As I mentioned, getting to Heaven and avoiding Hell is a natural by-product of getting "saved," but it is far from the whole of it, much less the central focus of it.

The result of us focusing on what we'll get out of salvation is for us to be like the Pharisees, who could only focus on the fact that someone had broken their law of what constitutes working on the Sabbath, ignoring the miracle that has taken place right in their midst. When we reduce salvation to what we'll get out of it, we ignore the central miracle that has taken place in us and the commitment we are making by joining ourselves with Him.

The question we have to ask ourselves is whether our faith is so shallow that in getting saved, we've focused more on where we are going instead of who and whose we are to become?

How to Go to Hell

The Last Judgment Icon

The image to the right is called the "Last Judgment." It is based on Jesus' words found in Matthew 25:31-45:

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:"
32 "And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:"
33 "And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left."
34 "Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:"
35 "For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:"
36 "Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me."
37 "Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?"
38 "When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?"
39 "Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?"
40 "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
41 "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:"
42 "For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:"
43 "I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not."
44 "Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?"
45 "Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."
46 "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."

The contrast of faith and works here is important to understand how they work together for our salvation. But before we get into that, we perhaps need a definition of faith, lest we get headed in different directions.

Faith - shorthand for the Faith, or more directly, to trust in Jesus Christ with all your "heart, soul, mind, and body." Yep, in other words, to love God.

The common misunderstanding is to think "to have faith" is to believe in something, anything, hard enough, and it will happen. Sort of the "prosperity gospel" message: if you don't have what you ask God for, it is because you don't really believe it will happen. Note: there is some truth to that, but it needs context. As trust in Jesus Christ not only means "holding Him to His promises to us," but more importantly means holding ourselves to His will and desire for us. In other words, ask not what your God can do for you, rather, ask what you can do for your God, to paraphrase a popular saying.

Faith is commonly thought of as something that is abstract. We've turned it from a verb into a noun. This is due to the shortened version of the phrase: Have faith. But it is a shortened version of: Have faith in Jesus Christ. It always points to something you are having faith in. And since salvation can only come from Christ, it must point to Christ to be salvific.

However, the faith that people commonly talk about is a work-based faith because it references themselves. "If I have faith (in my own ability to believe it can happen), then it will. If it doesn't happen, it means that I didn't have the faith necessary to accomplish it. What it should say is that I didn't have the faith to trust in what Jesus Christ said, which is not only his promises, but what he said we will do: like carry our own cross and endure hardships for Him. If all we are in is for ourselves, we are no better than the seed cast on thorny ground.

With that context, we can make better sense out of the above verses in relation to works.

First, note how the people are divided: "As a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats." How does this happen? Through voice signals. Note in this video, that the goats are driven and the sheep are not. Also key is that the sheep know the shepherd's voice. (John 10:3-5) There is even examples of the shepherd carrying the sheep to where they belong, the few that get "lost."

How are the sheep called and the goats driven apart? Jesus states it is all involved in how they respond to Him as in how they treat other people. These "works" don't save us, but they are necessary to be there if we have a saving faith. Thus, it is not so much as what you do as who you are and whose you are. It involves a relationship with Jesus Christ through having faith in Him, that He is the Son of God and He alone has the words of salvation. The works, which must be there to be saved, are a reflection of our faith and love in Jesus Christ, which saves us. In other words, works must be present for salvation to be effective, but they are not definitive evidence of salvation if they are done without faith in Christ.

The first verse says that when Christ comes in "his glory", that it will be the defining moment of salvation. It is His glory that will "call" those to Him that know His voice, as well as that which will push the goats away because they experience God as eternal punishment. This is specifically why God says He hides himself from us, because if any of us were to look on His "face", it would bring about instant judgment upon us. If we are not ready, we would perish. In that day, we will see Him "as he is," face to face.

But God gives us time to establish that sheep-type relationship with Him. Because, as this parable tells us, there will come a day when we will stand before the full glory of God and be judged. That glory will either draw us to Him or push us away.

The good news is that Christ died for us while we were still goats, in order that we might become sheep. Then, it will be too late. Now, you still have time to become a sheep God will call instead of a goat that He will drive away by being who He is before us. That is by truly believing what he's said to be true and following through on what He's asked us to do.

So there is a synergy revealed between faith and works. So much so that Jesus' own words appear to be in contradiction to one another: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." (John 14:15) and "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." (John 14:21a). There is no contradiction between salvation through faith and works in synergy. Either one without the other, however, will not save you.