Have you ever thought about what you believe? What you trust and have faith in?
I don't mean just in regards to religion (though we'll get to that). Religion is probably one of the first things that come to mind when we ask about "what do we believe" or "what are we trusting?"
But belief, faith, trust, seems to be central to everything we do. Which is to say, we take a lot of things, almost everything, on faith. Most of our lives, I would venture, is lived by faith or belief in many different things. And those beliefs can vary widely.
Unless we have absolutely first hand, concrete "I saw it with my own eyes" or "it happened to me" experience on any subject, or tested something and found by your own experience that it is true or verifiable, and unless we have absolute access to the exact unadulterated facts of the case (which, arguably, we never have).....
virtually e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g we believe....
everything that we form a strong opinion about,
everything we base our decisions on,
everything we think we know that guides our lives....
with almost zero exceptions, every single thing that guides us, everything that we base our life decisions on, virtually everything is based on faith and trust in something.
What is good for a cold?
Which is the best television to buy?
Which washing machine is the most dependable?
Which dish soap cleans our dishes the best?
Which diet plan is the most healthy?
What's the best school for our children to attend?
Should I vaccinate my children?
Which computer is best for my needs?
Almost none of us have first hand investigative experience, examining the electronics and workings of modern televisions to know - factually- which tv is the most reliable and dependable. We talk to friends to see what they've experienced, read reviews, do comparative research, and maybe see what Consumer Reports or Popular Science have to say about it.
But after we consider all that we've been able to talk about, research, and review on any subject, we have to make a choice. The data is almost always exhaustingly inconclusive. We make our best choice by faith in the information we have, faith that we've done our best to sort it out and we hope our faith will be well founded. We almost never "know" conclusively what is best or right.
We intuit. We make our best guess. We go with our gut. We take our best shot.
If we fly anywhere, unless you are a pilot and fly yourself, we do it by faith and trust in the airline and airplane.
Unless you built it from the ground up, you have faith and trust in the engineers and mechanics that built your car.
If we actually get in and drive our car, we are exercising an enormous amount of faith in our fellow drivers on the road.
Faith that the driver next to us will obey the laws of the road.
(I know, we'll all laughingly say "I don't have any faith in the drivers around me" which, I humbly offer, is not true.
(If we didn't have faith, we wouldn't venture out in our two ton metal deathtraps, driving 70mph, on a freeway full of people we literally don't know and don't trust, driving alongside 18-wheeled, 80,000lb sledgehammers of oblivion.
(The truth is, we step out in faith every time we turn the key, or push the ignition button and drive down the road.)
It takes faith to even function in this world. Without faith, we literally would be paralyzed by fear and indecision, probably living in a cave somewhere eating I don't know what. Because if someone gave us food and said "eat, this is good and will keep you alive", we'd never take a bite without some faith in what we were told about the food, Without some faith in the person giving us the food, we'd never listen to them anyway.
Do you realize how much faith it takes to go to the grocery store and casually coast down the aisle filling our shopping carts with food? We literally have no idea where most of the food came from or how it was prepared and packaged, yet we trust that the food is safe. We trust the ranchers and farmers to supply us with fresh meat that, to be honest, almost none of city slickers know how it got to the grocery shelf. We exercise a ridiculous amount of trust and faith every time we go to the store.
We have absolutely no way of personally verifying the veracity of every claim made, every story related to us, every thing we're told to believe in order to survive in this world. Faith is hardwired into our being.
It's not a choice, its simply How. We. Live.
We literally live and move, every day, every month, every year, virtually all by faith.
We don't really live by sight, since we can't actually see, in real life, 99% of what we're told is truth, in order to verify if it is true or not. Nor can we tell what others are thinking. (With A.I. videos and photos today, we can't even tell if anything in the digital realm is reliable anymore.)
We literally live by faith in things unseen. We live by faith in what is passed on to us by others, by the accounts of their experiences and they by ours, in the form of books, stories, videos, photos, and news accounts (which are simply accounts of happenings elsewhere told via stories, videos, and photos).
We have almost zero ability to prove or disprove any of what we are presented with.
Think about that.
Was someone actually shot at the corner of 5th and Main last night? I dunno, that's what the newsman on TV said.
Was there an explosion at a warehouse in Salina, Kansas last night? Unless I live in Salina and saw it or I drive by and see the evidence in the morning, I have to admit.... I dunno, that's what the newsman told me.
Is the economy in the tank or rolling gangbusters? I dunno. I know the newsman told me things were great, but the newsman on the other station said things were in the tank.
Did that polar beer on the Facebook Reels really kiss a rabbit then climb onto an iceberg and hug a seal? It sure looks like it did! It looks real!
Now I don't know what to think.
Do you see?
Do you see how faith, belief, and trust is what we literally live by?
And what happens when the institutions and social organization and structure and story tellers we've come to trust falter?
What happens when our faith is shaken and we don't know what to believe anymore?.
When we don't know what to believe, we will often believe almost anything that sounds remotely reasonable to get us back on track, on a firm foundation. Or, we believe the things that coincide with our own biases because they help confirm our faith. Without faith, we are paralyzed.
So, to bring this to the point
(see? I literally cannot write a short essay.....sigh)
If we live so innately and naturally by faith in the stories we are told, and faith in things that, in reality, are unseen......
If we are literally living every day by faith, when we walk, drive, eat, spend, or do almost any other daily activity......
Then how we live reveals the things that we believe in, and that we have faith in.
If we say be believe something, but don't act on what we say be believe, the inconvenient truth is we don't really believe what we say we believe .
Conversely, acting on what we say be believe is evidence that we really do believe what we say we believe.
Further, the things we do and the ways we act and live reveal the things we really do have faith in and believe.
Jesus said you can tell a tree by it's fruit. He's not wrong.
If we say we believe that feeding the poor is important but we don't do anything to help feed the poor, the truth is we don't really believe feeding the poor is important.
Conversely, if we are involved in ways of feeding the poor, through donating or volunteering or whatever we are able to do, we expose the truth that we do care about feeding the poor.
Feeding the poor is not a litmus test, mind you. Just using that as an example.
But my point is, for good or ill, we act on what we have faith in and believe. And the things we do reveal what we believe.
Which brings me to my self-examination question:
Does my life reveal that I do have faith in and believe the things I say I do, or not?
(You know this had to come back to Jesus and faith and life, right?)
Jesus said
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15)
Elsewhere Jesus puts it another way;
"Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46)
Again Jesus makes the point about how our behavior reveals things about us;
"You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?" (Matthew 7:16)
Granted, Jesus is talking about identifying "false prophets", but what else is a false prophet than one who says they believe in Jesus but doesn't do what he commands?
The Apostle John riffs on this idea in his letter;
"By this we can be sure that we have come to know Him: if we keep His commandments. If anyone says, “I know Him,” but does not keep His commandments, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone keeps His word, the love of God has been truly perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him:" (1 John 2:3-5)
Harsh, but true.
----------------------------------
I write this not as a judgement, but as an encouragement. Not as a critique, but a diagnostic. A way of letting myself process my own thoughts, my own tendencies, and taking a somewhat honest look at my own life.
For some time now I've been pondering my own walk of faith, and have asked myself,
"Did Jesus really mean the things he said and commanded?"
I have to conclude that he did indeed mean exactly what he said. He said it for our good and for our benefit. Everything Jesus did was for our good and for our benefit.
Reader, please understand this truth: no matter who we say we are, or what we say we believe, or where we say our faith and trust is placed......
The truth of who we are, what we believe, and where our faith and trust is placed is revealed by how we live.
Who we are is revealed by how we speak. How we love. How we judge. How we treat our neighbor. How we treat our enemies. How we act and behave. These are the things that reveal who we really are.
If you thought John was harsh, listen to James;
"What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone?
"Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?
"So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds (good fruit in our lives, following Jesus' commands, doing the things we say we believe), it is dead and useless." (James 2:14-17)
Yikes.
Useless because a life without "good deeds" doesn't show Jesus to the world. A life lived with faith in Jesus is intended to show Jesus to the world.
--------------------------------
Ok, enough moribund expositing.
This was for me.
I want to live the remainder of my life full of good fruit that I can give away to others through "good deeds", living a kind and loving life that conforms to the faith I claim to believe.
I want those around me to see Jesus in me from time to time.
This is a tool I use to help me examine things from time to time.
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment