FAITH
VS. TRUST
Where
I come from, people often ask “Are you a believer?” We're too
polite here in New England to ask such questions. Which is just as
well with me since I'm never sure how to answer questions like “Do
you believe such and such?”
I
think what most people mean when they ask about 'believing' is
something like 'agreement with a particular doctrine' or 'knowing
something is true even thought it's unprovable.'
In
other words, questions of faith and belief usually have something to
do with intellectual assent to some particular thing—that Jesus was
born of a virgin or turned water into wine or any of those things.
I'm made uncomfortable by such questions. For one thing, the Greek
word we translate as “believe” is Pistos
and Pistos
could also be translated as “Trust”.
Now we're talking
sense--'trust' is something I can relate to. There are people I'd
'trust' with my life. I 'trust' is God—like the money used to say,
but I'm pretty foggy about the details of theology. I tend to take
most Creeds and theologies with a grain of salt—or perhaps several
grains.
You know how Jesus
is always saying we need to be like little children to enter the
Kingdom? I think what he's talking about is the 'trust' that children
have in the 'big people' around them. I watch my son toss his two
year old up in the air and catch her. Tegan laughs and laughs and
doesn't for a moment imagine Josh might drop her. I used to do the
same with him.
That's where I can
get some spiritual footing: 'trusting' in God. Depending on how I'm
doing that day, my answer about what I 'believe' might vary. But good
times and bad, I 'trust' that God is in control, in spite of all the
evidence to the contrary.
Shalom, Jim
No comments:
Post a Comment