The Mysteries of Faith

What is ‘faith? That is a broad and undefined question. Strictly defined it is: “complete trust, belief or confidence in someone or something.”

In the Christian context, we apply that word ‘faith’ to our belief in a God that is unseen, and to some degree, unknown to us.  We are especially challenged in our faith when we profess a triune God who is distinctly revealed in three persons (Father, Son, & Holy Spirit) but is still unified as one God.  So we can’t tell anyone how a triune God works…but I believe we can confidently say why it works. 

Yes, it takes elements of belief, trust and confidence in God, even though we have precious little empirical evidence to prove it…at least scientifically.  But we roll all those things of belief, trust and confidence into one thing we call ‘faith’.  And we cling to that faith.

However, for some, our faith doesn’t make sense.  Some might even say that absent cold hard facts of God, we have a ‘blind’ faith, literally a faith that is without seeing; that we have a faith that isn’t rooted in reality.  Some say “If there is a God, then let him show himself.” Others cannot believe in a God who does not prevent evil, pain and hardship.  The lack of ‘faith’ is found in the unresolved question: “If there is a God, then why would he let this happen?”

Why doesn't God do something obvious, like paint his
name on these mountains? Oh wait...maybe he did.

As a pastor, people ask me these questions; and as an ‘anointed’ representative of God, they expect answers. I preface my response that for the first 37 years of my life, I held the same perspective.  I could never detect any empirical evidence of God.  From my vantage point, God didn’t reveal himself to the world, let alone act in it.  Ergo, there wasn’t a God.

So I can empathize with the perspective that faith isn’t a reasonable and rational worldview. So I get it why faith in God doesn’t make total sense.

But then I challenge people to look at it from the opposite perspective. 

If our objection to God is that he doesn’t reveal himself to us, that he doesn’t ‘prove’ himself to us. I like to ask “how then should he do it?”  If we begin with the assumption that God wants to be known (and I assume that he does), then what obstacles stand in the way of an infinite God of the universe trying to communicate with finite beings in physical world?  How does God cross that which separates us in order to make himself known?

I remind people that we’ve been in this predicament before…we just don’t remember it.

Think of it this way: It’s undisputed scientific fact that everyone who has ever been born at one time existed in a ‘different’ world before they came into this one.  That ‘world’ was our mother’s

We were all here at one point.

womb.  We can trace our beginnings back to a time and space when an egg and a sperm came together in our mother’s womb, and then wonders of nature took over, and we started to be formed into a person. 

And while we are in our mother’s womb, we reach a point of developed where we start pushing against our momma’s belly.  We are also become sentient enough to react to things that are going on outside of our mother’s placenta.  In short, we are in alive.  It may be a rudimentary form of what we now consider alive, but we are alive none the less.

But here is the thing…we had no idea about the larger world that existed beyond the womb.  

To apply the same questions we do to God, could we have posed the same inquiries to our own mom?  While we were in the womb, could we have said: “If there is a mom, then let her show herself to me!”  Or while experiencing the exponential physical growth, which has to be painful, did we cry out: “How can there be a mom when I am suffering this kind of pain!”

Bottom line, how could or would we know we had a mom while we were in her womb?

Now that we have gone through the birth process, grown up and learned how to read and think, those questions are obviously nonsensical.  We understand the pragmatic proof of pregnancy.  But we need to keep in mind that we dismiss those questions only because we now have the advantage of standing outside the womb.  We have the benefit of hindsight, which is always 20/20.   

But we knew none of this when we were in the womb. 

Hello! Can you hear me?!?!

Imagine for a moment if we had the ability to communicate with a baby in the womb.  How would we respond to the questions of existence and pain?  I’m guessing when it came to the issue of existence, we’d probably be saying something along the lines of: “Your mom surrounds you.  She can’t reveal herself because you are inside of her.”  As for the physical pain caused rapid exponential growth in the womb, we could only offer reassurance that kind of painful growth is necessary preparation for life outside of the womb.  As painful as it is, without it we’d die. 

But obviously we can’t do that kind of communication.  Even though babies in the womb are separated from this world only by the thickness of their mother’s skin, the two shall remain separated until the time is right for them to leave that ‘world’ and enter this one.  The best that a mother can do is tenderly rub their belly and quietly sing lullabies to the one insider of her.

If all that is true; if all of that is reality; could we say the same about God?

Maybe having ‘faith is an exercise of humility to admit that perhaps the process isn’t quite done yet.  Maybe ‘faith’ is the perspective that we don’t have enough information to make completely informed judgments about what is happening to us.  Maybe ‘faith’ is realizing that this world isn’t as good as it gets. Maybe ‘faith’ is an enduring patience for being birthed from our mother’s womb into God’s own womb. Maybe ‘faith’ is the realization that God surrounds us to the extent we can’t see it because we don’t yet have the benefit of standing outside of it. Maybe the personal pain and societal evil of the world is similar to the exponential physical growth that happened inside the womb, with the difference being that it’s not about our bodily development, but our spiritual formation.

In the end, maybe ‘faith’ is nothing more than preparing us for the ‘world’ that we are separated from just by the thinness of God’s skin. 

Keep the faith,