A Reason to Believe--Dialogue Column 4.10.07

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY—Rev. Chase Peeples

One of my favorite authors, Frederick Buechner, writes the following about faith:

Almost nothing that makes any real difference can be proved…I cannot prove the greatness of the great or the beauty of the beautiful. I cannot even prove my own free will; maybe my most heroic act, my truest love, my deepest through, are all just subtler versions of what happens when the doctor taps my knee with his little rubber hammer and my foot jumps. Faith can’t prove a damned thing. Or a blessed thing either. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (San Francisco: Harper, 1973).

Like the love found in any good relationship, faith cannot be proven only experienced. I was trying to get at this point in my Easter sermon when I spoke about different responses to the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection cannot be proven; it can only be experienced. Our belief in the resurrection of Christ is not based upon scientific evidence but our own experience of the risen Christ in our lives.

Faith as a concept is spoken of in pretty cheap terms in our culture. Most often, “faith” is contorted into a three-syllable word by some TV preacher asking you to trust him with your checking account number. In such circumstances, faith becomes merely a lack of responsibility. Although we cannot prove God exists or that Jesus rose from the dead, we can make reasonable judgments about our lives and our behavior based upon our experience of Christ. Having faith does not mean ignoring the risks of belief or the evidence that seems to work against belief. Instead, having faith means looking at our lives and our world in all of their beauty and tragedy. We do not ignore the pain and suffering in our world; nor do we ignore the beauty and wonder of our world. We hold both together as we make the decision to believe based upon our experience of God.

Such a process begins with asking such basic questions as “Why do I believe in God?” and “Why am I a Christian?” (You might be surprised how rarely these questions are asked in churches.) If you can come up with an answer, the next question becomes “If I really do have a compelling reason for believing in this God stuff, what does this mean for my life?” Answering that question in words and actions is what it means to walk by faith and not by sight.

It is a bold thing to look at the suffering and violence of our world and declare that hope exists. Yet, if we do confess that we believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead, then we are saying just that. For people of faith, the resurrection means that death and suffering do not have the final say over our lives or over our world. Such a belief also necessitates action. If we believe that God is at work in our world, especially in the most painful circumstances, does not that also mean that we as the ones supposedly committed to God must also be a part of that work.

Recently, I prayed the Prayer of St. Francis at a funeral. At that moment when we celebrated a person’s life and affirmed our faith in God’s eternal care for her, we acted upon belief in God’s ability to take a single person’s life and make an eternal difference through it. We could not prove all that we were saying in that funeral; we could only confess our belief.

The Prayer of St. Francis seems to get at this idea that our belief in Christ demands something of us. It does not ignore the suffering in our world, on the contrary it acknowledges it and asks God to use us to bring healing in response. I believe it is a prayer that arises not out of scientific proof but out of a deep belief in the goodness and mercy of God. The prayer is worth reciting in this season when we celebrate the resurrection of Christ:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

Grace and Peace,

Chase