The “faith” business is big business today. Millions are literally sent to non-profit, faith-based organizations annually because they trust in the message and the messenger of that ministry. Other proclaimers of “faith” will tell you that if you pray enough or give enough, God will (no, have to) answer your prayers for wellness and wealth. Then you have the “Richard Dawkins” of the world that proclaim to any who will hear that not only is your “faith” worthless, it is in fact dangerous.
The fact is that people want to believe. They want to have faith in something other than themselves. They want to place their trust in someone they can count on in life. So people place their faith in money, or spouse, or company, or pastor, or God, depending on their stage of spiritual development.
Faith creates hope. And everyone needs hope in this world. The primary problem with a non-heavenly perspective of “hope” is that people get it confused with “hype.” The more “hype,” the more we have a tendency to believe it is true. Unfortunately, we have seen that most “hypes” are simply not true:
• The Titanic is “unsinkable”
• Y2K will bring computer disaster
• Jesus is returning no later than A.D. 1000, or 1848, or 1988, or 2000
• Dot.com investments are sound
• Tickle Me Elmo doll will be the best-selling toy in history
The author of the Book of Hebrews certainly understood the concept of first century “hype.” The Roman empire was particularly gifted in the art of hype, and much of the religious world based their entire sacrificial system on it.
Then you read Hebrews 11, often mistakenly called the “Hall of Faith.” I say mistakenly because these folks mentioned are simply like you and me, ordinary people, who made a choice to place their trust in an extraordinary God. If you read these 40 verses, you will see imperfect people trusting God without much supporting evidence, many of them dying before they witnessed the promise fulfilled. Why did they trust God?
They trusted because they knew God’s character! They knew that His word was as good as gold . . . no, wait . . . better than gold! They looked forward in hope to God’s promise, regardless of their own limiting circumstances. They had a heavenly perspective of life, because it was God’s perspective about life.
That kind of faith creates chutzpah– an extraordinary boldness, an audacity, real guts, and the courage to live life following God against the prevailing tide of secularism, rationalism, and pluralism. That kind of chutzpah doesn’t need any bumper sticker hype, but it does need a living God who is the “way, truth, and life.”
Faith is only “tricky” when you can’t be confident about the message or the messenger. In our case, as followers of Jesus, our faith is simply a title deed of good things to come.
In His love and peace,
Fr. Tony