Face it, faith does not make sense. It goes against logic. It looks foolish to others who don’t understand it, which leaves the one trying to live by it, attempting to explain something as if it makes complete sense. In fact, the deepest desire of the one living by faith is to convert others so they can live the same way. Evangelism is built into the lifestyle.
When I was a young believer, when I knew less than I know now, which still isn’t a whole lot, I wanted to convert others, not so much for their sake, so they wouldn’t go to hell, but because I thought if I could convince someone else, then it would reinforce that what I believed was actually true.
Because true faith is as wild as John the Baptist eating grasshoppers, many opt for faith-lite. It’s couching faith so we can stay out of that hell place and yet not have to become missionaries.
May I submit to you that your level of faith is not the problem.
Faith is the compass for your journey. It is pointing the way home.
Some skydive into faith.
Others prefer a quieter path.
And do you know what?
I don’t think it matters to God.
In fact I think God has purposed to call forth people from all walks of life, all ages, all levels of intelligence, and all capacities of starting faith. Furthermore I don’t think it matters to God someone’s pace at accepting faith’s radical ideas and implications. Nothing about faith’s journey is one-size-fits-all.
Another way to put this is your faith in God is your personal relationship with him. No reason to compare it to the faith of anyone else. Instead, just compare it to your past self. That’s usually your best measure of progress.
Your faith currently might be a formal sort of thing or mostly fear-based. You might have come to God just yesterday and only out of desperation having tried to find life and wholeness in everything else. You might even right now be thinking about trusting God, not sure what this means. Also you might see the risk of professing such a faith. To do so could cost you important relationships and in some parts of the world, your life.
So why does God require us to have faith in him?
I don’t know for sure, but I have a few ideas.
To begin with, God is not desperate. He doesn’t need anyone to believe in him. If they do or not it doesn’t change God. Therefore the only ones who need faith are you and me.
Because God is complete in himself, he creates out of a desire to do so. What he creates is a reflection of who he is. I have no idea why he does this but am sure glad he does.
As far as I can tell, the most complicated part of creation is not the galaxy, or the atom, or light and gravity, or plankton and giraffes. The most complicated creation is giving some of his creatures the ability to love like he loves.
To not just have a static display of stars and sea creatures, that are beautiful but just live out there functions as pre-designed, there must be placed into existence creatures capable of complex thought and language. In addition, true love can never be forced and yet does not completely come naturally. This fact opens up the possibility of rebellion. Created beings given the ability to love can choose instead to go their own ways. This results in detaching from the giver of life, which is another way of saying this is to ultimately choose death instead of life.
The interesting thing to me is that when we look at love as an opportunity to rebel, it requires ahead of time — before God creates these types of creatures (which includes, according to the Bible, both angels and men) — a need for a path of salvation or recovery. In other words God has to show us love through personal demonstration. Without God getting involved we would never be sure that he is loving. In addition, because love is linked to God it is also linked to other attributes of God, like truth and justice (yep, even hell).
So faith is the way back to God that preserves love. He calls us to trust in his grace as provided in his salvation plan involving Jesus, who is 100% Man and 100% God becoming our Savior, Jesus the Christ.
Makes sense?
Not completely, but it is simple enough to be inclusive, and profound enough to provide theologians employment.
Oh, and completely disgusting to those still in rebellion.
As for the one who chooses to love God back with whatever ability he or she has at the time, this is where the idea of the mustard seed faith (a seed that looks like just a speck of dirt) is so important.
It doesn’t take great faith to believe in God. It just requires a beginning that includes the admission that I have strayed. My natural ways apart from him are certainly not his ways. Am done running and want to know more.
This is the confession of the prodigal son who was never able to give his complete speech before his father embraced him with a kiss and restored him to sonship.
If you want that kind of treatment from God, then ask him for it.
That is all the faith required.
He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
Matthew 13:31-32 (ESV)
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
Luke 17:5-6 (ESV)