All of Us Have Faith
In my post yesterday I wrote about Christian faith. But I think faith is a universal characteristic of humans beings; everyone has faith. And the thing you have faith in will determine the quality of your life. Here is what I mean:
I know four things about humans, no matter gender, race, ethnicity, culture, or in what time of human history they were born. These four things are among the things that make us human. First, every person has a deep need to belong, to be accepted, and to be valued. In the book ‘The Art of Loving’ Erich From writes “The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. The absolute failure to achieve this aim means insanity.”
Second, every human being has a deep need to worship. The earliest archeological sites in Turkey were arranged around temples – man’s earliest recorded inhabited sites were sites of worship. We will worship. The question is ‘what will we worship’. History shows us there are only two choices: we will worship something transcendent (I call that God) or we will worship something in our world, which is to say, we will worship ourselves.
Third, we will worship the thing that gives us the value that we need.
Fourth, we will become like what we worship. If we worship money, we will become a person who sees everyone around them as creditors or debtors. If we worship power, we will see everyone around us as either people who can enhance our power or who can steal our power. Both of these ‘gods’ cause us to dehumanize the people in our world. Or, if our faith is in God, we will become more like Him.
As I said in an earlier post, whether we believe in Adam and Eve or not, we all struggle with spirits of rejection and the fear of rejection. Most people have to deal with the voice in their hearts and minds that says “you are not good enough” and “you have no value”. Most of us, if we are honest, experienced some significant type of devaluing or rejection at an early age. The devaluing might be the result of physical or emotional abuse (which could include an emotionally distant parent), divorce, abandonment, rejection by ‘friends’ and family, the death of a parent or sibling, etc. One or more of these types of events strike deep into the heart of a child. They are like seeds that fall on the fertile soil of the spirit of rejection that is already part of who they are. The seeds sprout into a tree of rejection whose roots sink deep into their hearts and determine how they look at and interact with the world around them as they grow older. As a result of one or more of these devaluing events, the child grows up believing that they have no value, they are not good enough. This is a root lie that God hates.
I think this scenario is typical of many people. It certainly was the case with me and most of the men I know today. But because we have such a deep need to feel accepted and valued, we will from an early age, find those things outside of ourselves that make us feel accepted. Generally, we select one of two ways to overcome our emotional pain: we seek the honor and recognition of man (man’s desire to be honored by men) or we worship the created things like possessions and money. In Romans 1:25 Paul writes, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped the created things rather than the Creator” (NIV). The ESV (English Standard Version translation) says, “They worshiped and served the creature (self) rather than the Creator”. We select an ultimate thing to give us the value we need to satisfy our deepest human need.
In his book ‘The Dynamics of Faith’, one of the great books written about faith in the 20th century, Paul Tillich calls the thing, whatever it is, that gives us sense of acceptance our Ultimate Concern. This is the one thing that we believe we cannot live without; it is the one thing that we will protect at all costs. If you try to take that thing away from me, you are my enemy.
Every Ultimate Concern demands a contract with the person who selects it as the path to acceptance and value. The contact goes like this: “I will totally fulfill you, but you must totally surrender to me”. Acceptance of this contract and the belief and trust that the thing you made the contract with will deliver in both the present and future on the promise of total fulfillment, spiritually, emotionally, and physically, is faith. It makes no difference if your faith is in money, sex, power, accomplishment, reputation and relevance, work, family, knowledge, health and appearance, or even Jesus (who offers a covenant, not a contract). In each case, the belief that your Ultimate Concern will deliver total fulfillment if you totally surrender, is faith. You see, everyone has faith. It is an innate, ‘built in’, part of what it means to be human.
The world shows us, and scripture confirms it, that every Ultimate Concern, except Jesus, with time leads to death. If not physical death, then at least spiritual and emotional death. And when we wake up after years of faith in the Ultimate Concern (other than Jesus) and begin to realize that the promise of fulfillment was a lie, we lose hope, joy, peace and even the will to live. We were deceived!!! (Perhaps a better way to put it is all along you thought you had made a covenant — an agreement in which the other party will always uphold its end of the deal — but in reality you entered into a contract, which can be broken).
The Ultimate Concern, other than Jesus, is what the Bible calls an idol. Idols kill. When we worship an idol we are really worshiping ourselves. We have placed ourselves on the throne of our life. This is a good definition of pride. You have heard the expression “pride goes before the fall.” This is why.
This is not a 20th or 21st century problem. In around 600 B.C. the prophet Jeremiah spoke these words to an idolatrous Israel, “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends upon flesh for strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell n the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives” (Jeremiah 17:5, 6). Finding your value and acceptance in idols leads to a lonely, dry, and empty life.
In contrast, accepting what Jesus promises to us (which really is a covenant),” I will totally fulfill you, but you must totally surrender to me” brings life because only Jesus is totally trustworthy and has our best interests at heart. There is no other way to life. In the same chapter Jeremiah says, “But blessed in the man who trusts (has faith in) in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; it leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17: 7, 8). Finding your value and acceptance in Jesus leads to a living, fruitful life that can handle whatever the world throws at it.
Finally, a word about evil. There is evil in the world. I define evil as anything that seeks to kill life or liveliness. Jesus says the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy – to steal joy and peace, kill life and liveliness, and destroy relationships. That is the purpose of evil. Paul ties evil to idolatry when he wrote, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). Note that Paul is saying ‘a’ root, not ‘the’ root. Paul is saying that the worship of money, power, work, sex, accomplishment, etc. releases evil into the world, at least human evil. When we will kill, either literally or figuratively (for example with gossip), another person to protect our Ultimate Concern, we are releasing evil.
Have to stop now. Heading off to Africa today. For those who are interested I’ll try to post Africa highlights each day.
Grace and peace,
John