On Faith (ii): God is Mine

Last time I reflected on Faith, I expressed that I believed it to be "Seeing God", and that it is something that can be acquired gradually,

that God works on us all the time so that we may see Him,

and that there are many aspects of God... we get to know & understand Him bit by bit, lesson by lesson.

It hit me today that many Christians reduce Faith to be an announcemet of "Jesus Christ, Son of God, is my Savior".

No offence to anybody, but I think that is hardly enough.

Aside from the important point that any Faith must be detailed in emotions, thoughts & experiences (& not just a verbal testimony),

and aside from the fact that this reduces Christian Faith to a superficial binary Faith like the one present in many other so-called religions that are  about nothing more than loyalty to a name... aside from all that, I see this Statement to be the crowning statement of a whole body of Faith that should also be acquired.

In my opinion, one of the main components of that body is the lesson of "God's taking my side", followed by the lesson "God will make everything alright" .

The first lesson is a lesson that sounds to the modern ear like a naive egoistic statement, which is debatable, but I don't think that makes the lesson any less valuable,

it surely won't make it any less pronounced in the Scriptures!

We see this sentiment of "God is taking my side" for example written all over the psalms, as well as in most of God's promises throughout the Old Testament, not to mention that it is evident in the OT's historical accounts.

I personally believe God is actually on our side, and by 'our' I mean all people,

but for the people of the Old Testament, with their understanding of their ruthless world, they can't possibly be expected to imagine themselves reconciled with all nations (neither could all nations imagine themselves reconciled, I think!)

In those settings, God wanted them to be perfectly sure that He's not on the enemy's side,

neither is He neutral, he wanted them to trust Him & rely on Him, and know that He is THEIRS.

I believe God has done so much to root this belief in the people of the OT, and with just reason.

This belief makes God personal, and therefore intimate and close,

which is the only way He'll have it, I believe,

and the only healthy base to build our more advanced knowledge of God upon.

I cannot stress this point too much, that I believe this Faith to be by far the most important lesson to learn from the OT.

To believe that God, in even our most primitive understanding of Him, when His strength was expressed in storms and His wisdom expressed in riddles... we saw him expresses His love in bias!

If He'll ever have to take a side, it'll be mine.

I think this idea has offended many people across the ages, and lead to a lot of explaining away of Scripture.

But the beauty of this belief is that once it's dwelled upon, absorbed & experienced, it must lead to the second -and more important- belief: "everything's going to turn out perfect!"

That one is harder to hold on to these days, and I suspect it's because we don't really believe in the first concept to begin with.

If God is always & constantly on our side (rather than on the other side, or on no side at all) then things will always turn out in our favor.

They're always going to turn out perfect

He will make sure they do.

And that is what I believe the Old Testament Faith was all about.

An act of God

I really need to say something, something very specific, but to put it into a specific written form that is anything close to comprehensible will probably need an act of God.

God...

An act of God.

For some reason (usually specific) and on some level (mostly unconscious) people refuse to recognize God's actions.

Those who have holes in them and feel they've never taken anything, and refuse, like Israel in the Sinai desert.

Then those who see too many holes around and feel they've taken too much, and refuse, like Gebran's prohecy.

and so nobody's really expecting anything from him,

and everybody's really needing everything from him.

Like an act of God.

I believe I at least, am an act of God.

In the sense that he was responsible for setting in motion the events that ultimately led us to be... and be here, 

in the sense that he specifically caused me to be... and be here,

and in the sense that he acts in, with, for and through me.

and I believe I am right.

Megalomaniac?

Well... a curious case, at least.

Count The Expenses (On Luke 14: 25 - 35)

Yesterday, the Sunday mass bible reading included this part

Now large crowds began to follow Jesus, because apparently they wanted some of the power he had demonstrated. I think they thought that if they stuck with him (like the twelve or the seventy desciples) he'll impart some of that power to them. So Jesus said the following to them:

 25Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. 27And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

I doubt the original word would be translated hate, but even if it did, I'll choose to read it as "stop relying on them for power".

(Too elaborate, maybe, but I'm not introducing a radically new reading here, merely a more meaningful one -you'll see why- since almost every reading avoided the direct meaning of the word Hate to maintain moral consistency)

This might have some significence if we bear in mind that the paragraph right before that one was the Parable of the Great Banquet, whose most convincing reading in my opinion was that it's about the casting out of the Jews when they hung on to their traditions and "comfort zone" rather than go after real fulfillment.

So effectively, Jesus is telling the Jews here that they shouldn't expect to be able to follow him (which is what they were after) & also rely on their old food to satisfy them.

Neither their families nor their tradition will do them much good as far as their "Salvation" or happiness is concerned. They'll have to be refused (the cross bit makes that even clearer) by their old world to follow him into a new one.

So what's the alternative? I mean even for those who stuck with their old, seemingly safe lives, did it work?

Actually the question is can it work? For the Jews or for any of us??

 28"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'

So we want to be happy, we want to get the best deal out of living.

In fact, we don't just want the best deal, we want that deal to be enough to make us perfectly happy.

So we sit and estimate the costs...

What will it take? a big family? a beautiful wife? beautiful children?? loyal friends? perfect soulmates? a prestigous job? a multi-storey house? money? how much money??

Thing is, if we really sit down & estimate the costs of being perfectly happy, I doubt we'll manage to find a way to muster sufficient resources. It just won't work! So what are we really hoping to accomplish if we stick to our resources?!

 31"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

I have heard a few different readings of this parable, none of them was in the least bit satisfying to me, then yesterday it just hit me that the "other king" whom we seem to be intent on fighting is actually God!

And this parable seems to me to be about the inescapable love of God!

God came to win humanity over, the Jews fought back his love offer and clung to their egos and traditions.

But can we really defeat God? Can we win the war against God's love?!

Note that his armies (his means and abilities) far surpass our own, and if we sit down and carefully consider it, we'll find out that we really won't stand a chance. So wouldn't it be better to save ourselves the pain and earlier on "ask for terms of peace"?

So God seems to be telling us that we shouldn't fight that war.

But he's also letting us play it our way, so if we insist on holding on to our old, fake sources of safety, then well, we won't follow him.

And to sum up he says that

 34"Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. 
      "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

Which is a continuation of the Parable of the Great Banquet as well. If they said No, they will simply be "uninvited" and thrown out of the "God's People" (which also means his desciples) circle.

In my opinion, bearing in mind the last parable, the story shouldn't end there.

Thankfully, it doesn't...