Whose Choice?
FROM THE RECTOR
Think of someone in whom you have great confidence—someone who rarely disappoints you, someone who almost never lets you down. When did you first meet that person? How did you come to trust them? Was there a singular moment when they proved that they deserved your confidence? Or was it a gradual development revealed over time?
If you can, think of someone who has lost your trust in the past, perhaps even someone who lost it but eventually earned it back. Do you still have a relationship with that person? How has that relationship changed over the years? What was it that caused you to lose confidence in that person? Was it a big mistake or a pattern of repeated failures? If that person has redeemed that broken trust, how did they accomplish it? What made you decide to trust them again?
Occasionally we come into a relationship already trusting someone. A physician, who is well trained and board certified, makes a diagnosis and proposes a treatment. An attorney, whose canon of ethics requires that they zealously represent their client, assesses our situation and offers counsel. A teacher, who has devoted their life to educating children, shows us unqualified love and support.
More often we meet someone who must earn our confidence. We are naturally suspicious creatures, in part because of our drive for self-preservation but also because we know first-hand how deceitful human beings can be. Some of us, who have experienced repeated hardship and betrayal, have a harder time learning to trust someone. Others have a gift for being open and vulnerable to just about everyone they meet.
In every case, the decision to trust someone is one we make not only with our head but also with our heart. We can want to trust someone. We can rationally assess a relationship and decide in our minds that someone is trustworthy. We can even choose to make ourselves vulnerable to another person as an act of trust, but our gut is not so easily swayed. Even though modern physiology confirms that these complex experiences all take place in our brains, we know that sometimes our hearts and minds are not on the same page. In circumstances like that, when we want to have confidence in someone but cannot convince ourselves of it, what can we do?
For centuries, Christianity has been presented and practiced in the West as something we engage primarily with our minds. We study the scriptures. We listen to sermons. We recite the creeds. We go to Sunday school. All of those pursuits have value, but, if being a Christian is only thought of as collection of intellectual convictions and conscious choices, following Jesus becomes something we attempt with only half of ourselves—our minds. Wat happens if the other half, our guts, aren’t willing to accept what we say we believe?
Do you have confidence in God? Do you trust that God will always be faithful? Do you trust that God will never let you down? Believing in God does not mean understanding and agreeing with every precept of the faith. It means trusting that God is the one who can and always will provide for you in the ways that matter most. The deposit of the faith—the Bible, the creeds, spiritual and theological writings, and the whole doctrine of the church—are merely tools that help us learn how to trust in God with our whole selves. Those things by themselves cannot convince us to trust God, but they help us know that God is trustworthy.
Although they are related, believing in God with our hearts is different from believing in God with our minds. We can do the research—read the Bible, study with experts, even get a graduate degree in systematic theology—but, until our hearts belong to God, our faith may become a mile wide, but it will only ever be an inch deep. What can we do to deepen our heart’s belonging to God? How can we convince that part of ourselves that needs more than philosophical propositions to give itself over completely to God?
Sometimes God disappoints us. Sometimes God denies us the thing we hope for most in the world. Sometimes God leaves us feeling abandoned and alone. How do we get back to that place where our lives recognize and embrace the goodness of God? As with anyone or anything we encounter, faith in God grows through repeated experiences of God’s faithfulness. What can you do to encounter again the unwavering love of God?
The Bible is a good place to start. It is the record of God’s saving work in human history. It recalls moments of God’s goodness, mercy, and love, even when they come in challenging and upsetting ways. When you read the Bible, however, do not approach it as if you must agree with every word as historical fact, but allow the deeper truth of God’s abiding presence among people to permeate the text and your reading of it. The creeds are helpful, too, not as a litmus test for your own faith but as the basic statements of the faith we share across the centuries. Their words matter not because they demand conformity but because they help us know how full and real God’s love and salvation are.
The best way to experience God’s faithfulness is to encounter it within a community of faith. As the church, we are the ones who gather to remember the ways that God has saved us across the generations and to celebrate God’s goodness among us even today. That is what we hear when we read the Bible together. That is the faith we recite together in the creeds. That goodness and faithfulness are what sustain us as we care for others.
In the end, we do not choose God; God chooses us. It is our experience of God’s decision to love us and care for us that awakens within us the ability to respond with faith in our minds and in our hearts. We grow in confidence in God when we experience repeatedly God’s faithfulness toward us. God is always faithful. Joining in the community of faith—especially when that faith seems distant—is one way to find it again.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan