God is Dead. And we have killed Him.

When losing faith is a good thing.

Do you ever feel your faith slipping away? Maybe in the face of a disaster like the tsunami or Katrina. Or, you begin to doubt while watching a loved one suffer from a debilitating illness or a traumatic setback. Or while going through your own wilderness experience. Maybe you have a prayer which has gone unanswered for far too long.

I have had many periods in my life when I felt that I could just no longer believe in God. Divorce. Death. Disease. Disaster. One setback after another. Prayers that just were not answered the way I wanted them answered. Oh wait…

What was it that was slipping away? Was my faith in God dead? Philosophers have proclaimed the death of God and the result of that loss is a barren nihilism. After losing the concept of God, one loses the basis for Christian morality and the foundation for absolute values. Aye, there’s the rub!

I have found that in losing my faith I lose not my faith in God, but my faith in my concept of God.

This may seem to be splitting hairs, but it is very important distinction to help in understanding faith and religion and learning to live with our fellow human beings who may see things differently. God, if god is truly God, is ultimately mystery for us finite human beings. Our brains can only experience on a cognitive level, concepts and abstractions. Lets call them ideas. We have our ideas of God.

Now, many of these ideas are good. God is loving. God is forgiving. God is eternal. But they are not God in himself. God is ultimately beyond our conceptions of God. We may use analogy to speak of God and speak truly, but God remains a mystery of light and love. God calls us to enter into this mystery, to be loved by and to love God by loving one another. Our ideas of God, if our faith is truly a living thing, will continually grow and deepen as we enter more fully into the mystery and increase intimacy with God. And sometimes, it will seem that our very faith itself is crumbling under the press of a deeper reality.

Think of how the disciples must have felt on Holy Saturday. Their messiah had been crucified. The man who was promised by God to save Israel had been murdered by the ruling powers. He was gone! This certainly called into question their ideas and their faith. But then Sunday came and He was resurrected. Their faith entered into a whole new life.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes. (John 20:1-10)

The beloved disciple saw, and at that moment, found belief in a new conception of Jesus, which was not yet understood. He made the transition from disaster to a new depth of faith. And then they returned to their homes, I imagine to return to scripture to work this stuff out.

So when it feels like we are losing faith, maybe it is a good thing. Maybe what we lose are our limiting conceptions and self-constructed ideas of God. If we can just hang on long enough to let go… Then we too can see, and believe.

Recognizing Miracles

Do you recognize Him?

I love stories of miracles. I believe that they are stories which do not suspend reality. They do not claim that God can break the “laws of science.” No, I believe that we have truly discovered many the laws of the behavior of creation. Order and unity was one of the gifts of God in the act of creation. God ordered it well and called it good. So it isn’t about breaking the rules, it is about following them more intensely. Science has systematically and very accurately in many cases been able to observe and describe the way the world works. But, there are instances which impartial scientific observation struggles to explain. Many have experienced these instances in their life. I have. They are miracles.

I have witnessed many miracles in my time: spontaneous remissions of fatal diseases, alcoholics relieved of the compulsion to drink, addicts relieved of their craving, fevers and sickness leaving almost instantaneously at the touch of a praying healer. I do not think that these are suspensions of the laws of the universe at all, but are an intensification of the ultimate principle of creation: God’s Word.

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed. (Mark 6:53-56)

In the Torah, there is a command to Israel to create a fringe around their garment with four tassels to remind them of God’s commandments. These commandments were given by God in love. Obedience to them allows one to be fully human (created in God’s image) and to live life in the fullest. This fringe of the garment reminds the Israelites of God’s love for them. It is this recognition of God as love which brings an awareness of forgiveness and an invitation to healing.

It is our job as faithful human beings to remind one another of God’s love for us. We can do this by acting in love rather that reacting in fear. For me this is almost always difficult, because we live in a culture of fear. I have been taught to react. My work and my growth depends on my commitment to relearn responses of love. It is who I am as a human being created in God’s image to be an instrument of love. I have one great teacher for this, God’s Word incarnate: Jesus. The only problem is that he has died and is risen. How can I recognize him at work in my life?

The people of Gennesaret apparently had no trouble recognizing Him. He had just performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes and had been doing some particularly amazing things in the area. They were ready for a savior. The Son of Righteousness had risen and he had healing in his wings (see Malachi).

Do you recognize Him?

Faith and chaos

It is so hard to be faithful in the midst of chaos. Do you ever feel like you are being assaulted by an enemy? Maybe it is the phone company who won’t give you a day’s grace so you can cash your paycheck, before cutting off your service. Maybe it is traffic; every shortcut you take seems to pile you deeper into congestion and you catch every red light. Maybe it is the feeling of losing control and life just seems to be too much to handle. We have all been there like a cork bobbing on a chaotic sea, when life itself seems to hang in the balance.

When evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. (Matt 6:47-50)

In times like this I am more apt to curse than to bless. In biblical language, the sea is a symbol of chaos and evil. Israel had no Coast Guard to call, no radios on which to issue an SOS, no Navy helicopters to pluck the shipwrecked from the waves. The sea during a storm is a terrifying place. In this gospel, Christ is revealing himself as Lord over chaos. Even the great and chaotic sea, which at one time (Noah) had overwhelmed the world, cannot keep Him from accomplishing his purpose. But the disciples did not understand yet.

I am there with them often. When I am faced with my unmanageable life, and things which are beyond my control overwhelm me, I forget that I belong to the one who is lord over all of it. When my faith is placed in something finite, like my ability or the boat, I am afraid. If I remember that my faith is ultimately in the one who commands the sea and the storm, what have I to fear?

Where is your faith?