Elusive Faith

I stumbled across this posting while looking up something for my other blog. I was too curious not to read why this man is no longer a Christian. In four parts he lays it all out: He was raised by religious parents, baptized, and felt he was living a lie. He couldn’t feel the power of God working in him. He knew he was a sinner. He stated so much. He had heard of God’s grace, but never “felt” it. Eventually the man came to a crisis in a prayer service. The pastor asked them “all to recall our thoughts and feelings on the day we were saved.” He inwardly admitted his struggles, and thought he could fake it, but then realized he didn’t want to lie. So he left and didn’t look back.

In the page which profiles him is this comment by him:

“I’ve run into this line of thinking before: God is elusive, distant and mysterious while Satan is potent and actively at work, everywhere. Well, it seems to me that I have never encountered either God or Satan. I find it far easier to believe that there’s no one here between my ears but me. I think I realized very early on, without putting it into words, that Christianity on a superficial level sounds like pure nonsense: God impregnated a virgin, had a son, then had his son brutally killed, essentially sacrificing himself to himself -- all for my benefit. What an absurd story. The only thing that could make it real, I decided, would be a personal, emotional experience, an encounter with the divine. I devoted ten years to trying for this. What I found was nothing. So I’ve concluded that religion is all manmade dogma, and pure twaddle to boot. And leading my life this way has worked perfectly well for me, for all the years since.”

I remember Dr. Kleinig once talking about the mysteries of faith. I don’t quite remember where he took it (it’s in my notes somewhere) but I remember his telling of a young man who fell away because they tried to explain all the mysteries. When, as this man experienced, faith is boiled down to something you must do or feel, no mystery is left. The incarnation becomes another “absurd story”. If one can’t feel the power of the Holy Spirit, all they feel is self. Yet feelings are as changeable as a roller coaster—up one minute, down the next, and the stomach in the throat the whole time. Often times faith is not felt, only known. It’s like those days when you love your family in thought only, as they’re driving you so batty that you don’t feel as though you love them.

Someone should have properly divided Law and Gospel for this man. If they had, he may not have reached the conclusion that “religion is all manmade dogma.” Nobody told him that we are sinners and saints at the same time. Nobody told him that we can’t recall the thoughts and feelings we had on the day we were saved because that day happened before we were born. It was accomplished on the cross, and I know I wasn’t born on that day. I know it was the day I was saved, though.

Maybe as a genetic Lutheran I take solid doctrine for granted, forgetting that there are those out there who are Christian but don’t understand what that is or means. Or maybe it’s as Mrs. Mills said that I understand theology because I understand the leap of faith that it takes to move from philosophy to theology. It really isn’t a leap of faith, though. It is Christ and Him crucified and He carries us over—we don’t leap—for one is the theology of the cross, and the other is the theology of glory. It is the former in which our faith is grounded.