Category: Faith

Slow Faith: Lessons About Belief from the Disciples

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 5 Comments

There are times when it’s easy for me to be impatient with the slow faith of Christ’s first disciples. Sometimes, it’s hard to understand why faith was such a struggle for them. From where I sit, they appear to have had all the advantages that I lack. They knew Jesus face to face. They spent night and day with him for the three years of his earthly ministry. They saw him die and were among the first to speak with him after he had risen from the dead.

In other words, they experienced what I have often wished for myself. As John later wrote, the proof offered to them consisted of evidence that they saw, heard, and touched (1 John 1:1). Acts 1:3 says that after his resurrection, Jesus “appeared to them over forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.” Luke also says that during this period, Jesus not only taught them, “he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.”

A Slow and Uncertain Faith

So it comes as something of a shock to find in Matthew 28:17 that when Jesus appeared to the disciples once more at the end of all this, “some doubted.” Matthew doesn’t say who these doubters are. I wish that he had. I’d like to know if they were the traditional heroes of faith that come to mind, like Peter, James, and John. Or a small handful of marginal disciples who lurked on the fringes. A part of me hopes it is the former rather than the latter because I think I recognize their slow faith.

Doubt, even at this late stage, is consistent with the picture we have of the disciples throughout the gospels. They come to complete faith but not easily. Their belief develops in stages and seems to falter at several points, sometimes in the most surprising circumstances (Matt. 14:31; 16:14; Mark 4:4). Even during the final hours of Jesus’ earthly ministry, they are still struggling to grasp the details of the storyline. 

The epigram that I think best describes Christ’s disciples’ struggle to believe, at least until the Holy Spirit descends at Pentecost, is the phrase that Jesus uses to describe the two disciples to whom he appears on the Emmaus road. He calls them “slow to believe” (Matt. 24:25). There are several reasons for this slowness.

In an encounter that feels almost parabolic, Luke tells us that Jesus drew near to two unnamed disciples who were traveling from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, listening as they puzzled over the events that had taken place earlier that Sunday morning. He reveals that although Jesus himself walked with them, they were “kept” from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16). This was a supernatural veiling intended to drive home the reality of Christ’s resurrection to them.

I think there is an underlying grace note of humor, indeed even playfulness, in Jesus’ interaction with them. Imagine the risen savior listening to these two disciples as they give their account of the things that he has just experienced. They speak of Jesus’ words and deeds, his crucifixion, and the reports of his resurrection on the third day. They also express sorrow over the failure of their own expectations, saying, “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (v. 21). I can’t help imagining Jesus suppressing a smile as he listens to them.

I Want to Believe

Their questions seem understandable. Jesus had only just risen that morning. He had appeared to a few of his followers but not yet to everyone. These two disciples were trying to piece together the information that they currently had. Their doubts don’t seem to reflect an outright refusal to believe but are more of a lag in faith caused by a combination of incomplete information and their attempt to reconcile what had happened with what they had expected to take place.

Like the slogan on the old X-Files poster, these disciples wanted to believe. ButThey had expected the story to unfold quite differently. They were indeed looking for someone to “redeem” Israel. But the nature of that redemption and the mode in which Jesus accomplished it came as a surprise. They couldn’t see it because they were looking for something else.

This goes a long way in explaining the disciples’ struggle to believe all through the Gospels. It also helps us to understand our own doubts. I think there is a difference between being slow to believe and a stubborn refusal to believe. Like the first disciples, we may be confident that God is doing something but with preconceived ideas about how God’s plan should unfold. We have a kind of faith, but it is faith with an agenda. When God ignores the agenda we have set for him, as he almost always does, we become disillusioned. Instead of questioning our initial assumptions, like our first parents in the Garden of Eden, we begin to question God’s wisdom, goodness, and perhaps even his existence.

Also, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, our questioning usually springs from incomplete information. We don’t understand why God allows the circumstances that provoke our questions because we are unable to see how they fit into his larger plan. The concerns that challenge our faith are personal and are often narrowly focused on the limited sphere of our own lives and circumstances. What God is doing is much larger. Because we are on this side of eternity, it’s not yet clear how the little threads of our personal experience fit into the larger tapestry of God’s kingdom interests. If our faith suffers as a result, it’s usually because of the assumptions we have made about what God should be doing as much as it is about what he has done.

Irrefutable Evidence

The language that Luke uses in Acts 1:3 to describe  Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances emphasizes their persuasive nature. He calls those proofs “convincing,” using a Greek term other writers employed to speak of irrefutable evidence. In the medical realm (Luke’s own field), the term was used to refer to symptoms. Given the context, which is the bodily resurrection of Christ, perhaps this is intended to underscore the physical nature of this proof. Luke’s main point is that the evidence Jesus offered to his disciples was not only concrete, it was indisputable. However, I think that Luke’s description implies another equally important fact about the disciples themselves that is less obvious. It means that they needed persuading, even at this late point in the redemption story.

That they came to believe is clear both from their subsequent testimony and the tenor of their lives. As Peter would later put it, “. . . we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Pet. 1:16). The apostles eventually came to full conviction, a belief that was strong enough to withstand the threat of certain death. But they were not quick about it. Or, at least, not as quick as we might think they should have been, given the advantages that were theirs as eyewitnesses of Christ’s majesty both before and after the resurrection.

This slowness is a blunt reminder that the faith Christ demands of us relies on something besides physical proof. When Jesus criticized the doubters on the Emmaus road for being slow to believe, he might have urged them to pay attention to the evidence that was in front of their own eyes. He might have told them to heed what their own senses now told them was true. Instead, the risen Lord rebuked them for ignoring old promises. According to Luke 24:25–27: “He said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

Believing is Seeing

An old cliché says that seeing is believing. However, the slow faith of the disciples who beheld the risen Christ tells us that it is the other way around. It is faith that opens our eyes to see Jesus as he truly is. What is more, the faith that Jesus demands is faith in a word. This faith is a matter of believing the word of promise uttered long ago through the Scriptures. It is also faith in the word of the apostles, a testimony that is rooted in history and confirmed by the fact of the resurrection.

When Jairus, the synagogue leader, was told that his daughter had died and there was no longer any reason to trouble the master, Jesus replied, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” (Mark 5:36). The adjective “just” or “only” in Jesus’ answer captivates me. It’s a word with limiting force, as if Jesus has simplified everything by saying this. All Jairus has to do is believe. Yet “only” faith is not necessarily “easy” faith. Slow faith is not synonymous with unbelief. The repeated testimony of Scripture regarding the disciples’ experience confirms this. Faith came to them, but it did not come easily. When it did come, it did not come merely as a result of external proof.

With this command, Jesus isn’t focusing on the ease of what he tells Jairus to do but on its singular nature. In this moment of need, there was only one path forward for Jairus, and it led through Christ. The only way forward was to believe and, more particularly, to concentrate that belief on the person of Christ. The one option that was open to Jairus was to lean into Christ. This is the essence of faith. Faith does not look inward in the hope of finding some hidden reserve of confidence. It focuses its attention on Christ, who is not only our help but our only hope.

Philosophers and theologians have puzzled over the question of faith and its origin for millennia. Their conclusions seem to diverge into two primary streams of thought. One leans into human reason and emphasizes evidence. The other leans in the opposite direction by viewing faith as a supernatural result of the work of God. Each of these views seems to cancel out the other.

The position that Jesus takes, on the other hand, seems to be a more mysterious middle ground between the two. The faith that Jesus demands from his disciples is not without evidence. Most of Jesus’ dealings with his disciples, especially when it comes to the miraculous, seem to presume that they struggle with slow faith. He builds an irrefutable case for his claims about himself. He doesn’t expect them to believe without substantial proof. Yet their story shows that strong evidence is not sufficient to elicit faith. They saw Jesus perform miracles and even raise the dead. They had healed the sick and even cast out demons in Jesus’ name. Jesus told them point-blank that he would be crucified and rise again. Yet after Jesus appeared to them in the flesh, allowed them to touch him, and spoke at length about what was to come, “some doubted.”

Although our slowness to believe is nothing to boast about, we can at least take some measure of comfort from the fact that we are not the only ones to wrestle with this problem of slow faith. The Bible is full of similar examples. All of this suggests that slow faith is often normal faith.

But neither should we trust our doubt. We are those that Jesus described to Thomas, those who are blessed because they believe without seeing. We also stand with Jairus, whose only viable option was the path of faith. And if we find ourselves faltering, then we stand with Peter, who, in his sinking faith, knew enough at least to grasp the hand that Christ held out to him.

Full of Days: The Five Blessings of Old Age

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 1 Comment

Several years ago, I sent a letter to Eugene Peterson, one of my favorite authors, inviting him to write a foreword to a book I had just written. A few weeks later, I received a note from him which gently declined the invitation. “I am fast becoming an old man; the strength diminishes; I’m unable to do what I used to take on effortlessly,” he explained. Then, in true Eugene Peterson form, he added a line from a Wendell Berry poem: “I am an old man / but I don’t think of myself as an old man / but as a young man with disabilities . . .” Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what Peterson wrote. I probably crossed the line from “fast-becoming” into full-blown old age when I turned 70 a year and a half ago. I didn’t think about it much at the time. Like Wendell Berry, I could still think of myself as a young man, at least on the inside, if it weren’t for the old man who peered back at me every time I looked in the mirror. Lately, however, something has changed. I don’t feel young anymore. I feel my age more than I used to, and not just physically. I find myself wondering what the spiritual implications of aging might be.

Tarnish on the Golden Years

As a rule, our common perception of aging tends to be a negative one. We may stereotype this stage of life as our “golden years,” but many, if not most, people see aging through a negative filter. They view it as a time of loss and debilitation. Health declines, and friends die, leaving us isolated. There may also be a feeling that we have been set aside and marginalized. Some of this comes from within. When we are younger, our work is a major contributor to our sense of identity. It also occupies most of our energies. When that disappears, it can be traumatic. We aren’t sure who we are anymore.

I believe this loss of a sense of self is aggravated further by an underlying suspicion that the idea of retirement is unbiblical. Christians, we have been told, should burn out rather than rust out. When I announced my retirement, the question I was asked most often was, “What are you going to do with your time?” People seemed anxious for me. One of my colleagues reproved me for even considering the idea. “You can’t just do nothing!” they said.

One negative consequence of this anti-retirement theology is guilt by association with the old sin of sloth. It also suggests that our value is determined by how busy we are. For some, it may lead to a general perception that older saints are either unproductive dead weights in the church or that they are a drain on its attention and resources. Having a congregation that primarily consists of older people is seen as a problem, not a strength. For the elderly, this anti-retirement rhetoric can be a source of false guilt and produce in them a sense that God no longer values them.

Perhaps the greatest challenge faced by those who enter the last stage of their journey is the wrestling match with one’s past that often ensues. The latter years are a season of remembering and reflection. “I’m in my anecdotage,” congresswoman and journalist Clare Boothe Luce said when she was 78. It is not an accident that older people speak so much about the past. One reason is that there has been a shift in the focus of our attention. There is much more road behind us than in front. What lies before us is shrouded in mystery. We cannot make reservations, create itineraries, or even nurture ambition. What is certain is known only in broad strokes.

The final stage of life is a processing space. Our latter years are years of reflection that can turn into a downward spiral into the depths of regret. These regrets are not always for ourselves. They are often directed toward God as our focus on what took place in the past inevitably leads us to ask why. We cannot always find a satisfactory answer. At least, not one that we find compelling enough to assuage the disappointment we may feel.

The Five Blessings of Old Age

The truth is that the Bible’s general perspective when it comes to aging is a positive one. Old age is spoken of as a blessing. When Scripture tells us that Job lived to be “an old man, and full of days,” it is emblematic of blessing. In fact, in Job’s case, it is a sign of restoration (Job 42:16). In the book of Proverbs, old age is portrayed as a kind of arrival. “The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair the splendor of the old,” Proverbs 20:29 says. What strength is to the young, age is to the old. Age is an asset, not a liability.

But for the old, there is also a hint of loss in this verse. The strength that is the glory of the young is no longer the possession of the old. What do they get in its place? Gray hair? Really? Is the benefit merely cosmetic? I was hoping for more. What is it that age brings to the table?

  • First of all, and this is no small thing, old age brings length of days. In general, Scripture portrays the prolongation of life as a blessing and not a curse (Gen. 15:15; Deut. 4:40; 5;33; 22:7; Isa. 53:10). More time is more opportunity. But to do what?
  • Old age is associated with fruitfulness in the Bible, but a specific kind. The Psalmist says that those who are planted in house of God will flourish. According to Psalm 92:14–15: “They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, “The Lord is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.” What the Psalmist describes might be characterized as an extended vision of God. Age leads to insight when God is our primary reference point.
  • Consequently, there is often an association between age and wisdom in Scripture. It is no accident that counselors and advisers in the Bible often held the title of elder. But it isn’t the case that age automatically conveys wisdom. Older doesn’t always mean wiser. Ecclesiastes 4:13 observes, “Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to heed a warning.” The downside of aging is that it can produce a rigidity in thinking that leads to stubbornness and an unwillingness to receive correction. Those who are used to giving advice often find it hard to take it. However, the general principle is that time and perspective go together. The more extended our days, the more expansive our perspective. The biblical word for that perspective is wisdom.
  • Age is the repository of memory. “Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past,” Deuteronomy 32:7 admonishes. “Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.” Ironically, the stereotype of aging that we have usually focuses on memory loss. Perhaps this is the anxiety that proves the point. Maybe we know by instinct that memory is a treasure. This is lived memory interpreted through personal experience. The biblical word for it is witness.
  • Friendship with God is the ultimate gift that age has to offer. Genesis 48:2 describes how, at the end of his life, Jacob sat up in bed, and blessed Joseph’s sons. In many ways, Jacob had lived a hard life that included several disappointments, discord within his family, and great sorrow. Indeed, this was so much the case that when Pharaoh asked Jacob how old he was upon his first arrival in Egypt, the patriarch answered: “My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers” (Gen. 47:9). But on his deathbed, sick and nearly blind, Jacob pronounced a blessing over Joseph’s sons with these words:

“May the God before whom my fathers
    Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,
the God who has been my shepherd
    all my life to this day,
the Angel who has delivered me from all harm
    —may he bless these boys.
May they be called by my name
    and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
and may they increase greatly on the earth” (Gen. 48:15–16).

The End of the Matter

That being said, any older person can tell you that if aging is a blessing, it is a mixed blessing. The Bible does not dismiss or sentimentalize the challenges that come with aging. If anything, it is uncomfortably frank about the subject. “Remember your Creator, in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them,’ Ecclesiastes 12:1 warns. The same Bible that portrays length of days as a blessing also calls them “days of trouble.”

Scripture does indeed say that Job died old and full of days. He died on the upswing with fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He had seven sons and three beautiful daughters, and every one of them was rich. Job lived to be 140 years old and saw his children’s children to the fourth generation. But I can’t help wondering if there were nights when that old patriarch closed his eyes and dreamt of the children he had lost. Did his heart leap with surprise to see their faces again? And when he awoke in the morning light, were his eyes wet with tears for the days he had missed with them?

We don’t have to deny the very real changes and challenges that come with age. We don’t even have to like them. But I think we do ourselves a disservice if they are the only things we associate with the last stage of our lives. Aging does involve loss. Our capacity does indeed change. Eugene Peterson was right. Strength diminishes, interests change, and we are unable (or unwilling) to do some of the things we once did. We may find ourselves shaken by the years and haunted by the losses that have accumulated.

I appreciate the counterpoint that I find in Jacob’s testimony to Pharaoh about his own experience. He is no Pollyanna. His words are born out of 130 years of lived experience. He is honest enough not to hide from the reality of the sorrow he has experienced. Yet Jacob’s last words confirm what the author of Hebrews says was true of him and of all who are like him. Like many others, Jacob died in not yet having “received what had been promised” (Heb. 11:39). Yet Jacob died believing that the God who made these promises had been a shepherd to him all his life. Right up to the day of his death.

I have often said that the primary work of the last stage of life is to let go and prepare for death. There is some truth in this. I suspect one of God’s purposes for the rigors and losses that accompany old age is to pry our hands away from the life we have known so that we hold them open to the life to come. But in saying this, I think I overlooked another even more important truth. The greatest gift that aging has to offer is the opportunity to trace the hand of God in what has gone before. It is the gift of piecing together the mosaic of all that has happened and recognizing in it the hand of a shepherd.

Click here to listen to John's conversation with Chris Fabry.

Job and the Divine Game: Faith Amidst Suffering

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

In a letter discussing the infant theory of quantum mechanics, Albert Einstein famously observed that God “does not play dice.” Perhaps, but sometimes, it feels as if God does play games with us. At least, Martin Luther seems to have thought so. After studying the Old Testament patriarchs, Luther concluded that God is a Ludus Deus, a God who plays and often engages with us in a ludus divinus, or divine game. In modern vernacular, we might be tempted to paraphrase this by saying that God is “messing with us.”

This divine game is a kind of adversarial love, often reflected in circumstances that cause us to echo Jacob’s complaint recorded in Genesis 42:36: “Everything is against me!” What we really mean when we think this is that God is against us. In the divine game that Luther describes, God relates to us as if he were our enemy in order to make himself our friend. He judges in order to bless. He rejects so that he may eventually accept.

The nature of this adverse love is captured in the line from William Cowper’s hymn God Moves in a Mysterious Way which urges:

“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace;

behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.”

Luther’s thinking about this is part of a larger theological framework called Theologia Crucis, or the theology of the cross. This is, in part, a theology of suffering. Vincent Kam summarizes Luther’s theology of the cross this way: “God’s grace is hidden under his wrath, and his salvation is hidden under the cross.”[1]

What Luther describes is a sort of masquerade. This is not a pretense so much as a one-sided display that paves the way for grace. We find several instances of this in the Old Testament. One prominent example was the Lord’s expressed intent to destroy Israel after they sinned with the golden calf. “I have seen these people,” the Lord told Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation” (Exod. 32:9–10). Despite this offer, Moses argued with God, appealing to his nature and citing the promises made to the patriarchs (Exod. 32:11–14).

Moses did not really talk God out of doing anything. Rather, it was the opposite. By implying that Moses stood in his way, the Lord invited him to intercede. Moses stood between God and judgment once again when the people were on the threshold of Canaan and refused to go into the Land of Promise. As before, Moses reminded the Lord of what he had already revealed about himself, quoting God’s own words back to him and basing his appeal on the mercy that had been shown to Israel in the past (Num. 14:17–19).

Although he describes God’s anger as a kind of mask, Luther does not seem to have meant that it is merely feigned. Divine wrath is both real and dangerous to its objects. The thought of God’s anger is genuinely terrifying, even to those who are safe from it. Luther compared  this divine game to “a cat’s game which means death to the mouse.”[2] In 2 Corinthians 5:11, the apostle Paul similarly observes: “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others.” Yet, this fear was not the only driving force behind Paul’s ministry. Indeed, it quickly becomes apparent that it is not even the main driver. In verse 14, the apostle goes on to add, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.”

Paul’s language in these verses echoes his conversion experience on the Damascus road, where a blazing encounter with the glory of Christ left the future apostle face down in the dirt (cf. Acts 9:4–19; 22:6–21). Although Paul’s fear was both real and warranted, it was not the reason Christ appeared to him in this way. The endgame was not to terrify but to commission. From this moment on, Paul’s relationship with Christ fundamentally changed along with his mission. The persecutor of Christ became an apostle, Christ’s ambassador, and a messenger of God’s reconciling love (2 Cor. 5:18–21).

 Fear and love, like wrath and reconciliation, do not seem like they should be compatible with one another. Scripture seems to say as much. “There is no fear in love,” 1 John 4:18 asserts. “But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” Yet John’s statement about the two mirrors not only Paul’s experience but reflects a kind of order of priority. The experience of fear serves the agenda of divine love.

There is probably no one in Scripture whose experience exemplifies Luther’s concept of ludus divinus more than the Old Testament patriarch Job. According to the first chapter of the book that bears his name, Job’s great trial is set in motion when God draws Satan’s attention to him. “Have you considered my servant Job?” the Lord asks. “There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8). Job is offered for consideration in a way that seems to portray him as God’s champion, without a peer among the Lord’s servants. The assertion itself appears as if it’s designed to invite a challenge. The God who already knows the answer to every question that he asks is playing a game.

Satan takes the bait and outlines the general terms of the contest in Job 1:10–11. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land,” Satan declares. “But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face” (Job 1:10–11). God grants Satan’s terms. But the fact that he sets limits is an indication of who is really in control. “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power,” the Lord told him,  “but on the man himself do not lay a finger” (Job 1:12).

If this is a game, or at least a contest, what is Job’s role in it? Is he a player? Or is he being played with? All of this takes place out of Job’s hearing. He has no say in how the contest should take place. Neither does he have any idea that his life is the board upon which it is about to be played or that his children, his possessions, and even his health are its pieces. One is given the impression that the real contest that is about to unfold is between God and Satan. The fact that the Lord surrenders so easily to Satan’s conditions makes it clear that God is not only playing with Satan, he is playing him. The game is rigged in God’s favor, but Satan doesn’t realize it.

Job, on the other hand, does. It’s remarkable that despite the assortment of things that trigger his great suffering (the Sabeans, fire that falls from the sky, the Chaldeans, hurricane-force winds, festering sores on his skin, and even Satan himself), the only agent that Job really concerns himself with is God (Job 9:33–35). Job doesn’t exactly call God a bully, but the emotional tone of all his complaints can be roughly summarized as: “Pick on someone your own size” (cf. Job 9:1-12; 23:13–17). Yet, as unhappy as he is with his situation or with God, Job clings to faith. He expresses remarkable confidence in how God would dispose of his case if he were to be granted an audience with him. “Would He prosecute me forcefully?” Job speculates. “No, He will certainly pay attention to me. Then an upright man could reason with Him, and I would escape from my Judge forever” (Job 23:6–7).

Job had an intuitive sense that there was more behind these things than he was able to see. If this was some game, Job’s faith convinced him that he would prove the winner in the end. Yet Job also knew that this victory would not be due to his own strength or even his righteousness, which Scripture assures us was real (Job 1:1, 8). Job may be the hero of this story, but he is not the champion. The unexpected resilience of Job’s faith is ultimately traceable to his hope in another. Job was convinced that he was not to blame for the things that happened to him. But his trust was in a redeemer (Job 19:25).

What Job saw, though only through a cloud, we now understand with the kind of clarity that the incarnation of Jesus Christ alone can provide. Long after Job’s tortured bones had turned to dust, another player stepped onto the board. As Christopher Boyd Brown has observed, “When God plays his game with his saints, he does not simply set up a game for them to play (and lose) against terrible opponents—sin, death, and hell. Rather, God himself is in the game, in the incarnation. To play God’s game is to play with God, the incarnate God.”[3] Job might also add, to play God’s game is to be played by God and win.

[1] Vincent Kam, “Luther on God’s Play with His Saints,” Lutheran Quarterly, 34 no. 2 (2020), 139.

[2] Christopher Boyd Brown, “Deus Ludens: God at Play in Luther’s Theology,” Concordia Theological Quarterly, 81 no. 1–2 (January–April 2017), 163.

[3] Christopher Boyd Brown, Ibid., 166.

Heaven Can Wait

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 3 Comments

Have you ever wondered how fast God is? It sounds like the kind of question a child might ask. But for many of us, the honest answer would probably be, “Not as fast as we would like Him to be.” Although 2 Peter 3:9 says that God is not slow, waiting is so much a feature of the redemption story that Revelation 6:11 tells us that even the souls in Heaven must wait.  

Nobody likes to wait. Because of this, our prayers can sound more like demands than requests. We are like the man in the crowd in Luke 12 who called out to Jesus and demanded, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me” (Luke 12:13). Instead of sympathizing with the man or listening to his case, Jesus cut him off with this unsympathetic rebuke: “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:14-15)).

There is something unsettling about Jesus’ answer. It doesn’t fit the picture we have of Him. Although we don’t know the specifics about this man’s situation, we can make a few educated guesses. It is obvious that the man believed he had been wronged. It also seems reasonable to assume that his brother was the first-born, who had a right to 2/3 of the estate. Perhaps his brother had decided to keep the entire estate for himself. What is more, it seems likely that, given the circumstances and the nature of the request, this older brother was in the crowd when his younger sibling made this demand of Jesus. Jesus, however, shows no interest in protecting the younger brother’s legal rights in this matter. There are two parts to Jesus’ surprising response. One is an assessment of this man’s false view of Jesus. The other is an implied evaluation of the man’s motive in making the request.

When the Answer Means More than God

Both responses provide an important reality check for us. The first remark is a reminder that Jesus is not at our beck and call. He is not some kind of heavenly civil servant whose primary function is to make sure we get what we want or even that we get our fair share. Jesus’ unsympathetic answer is a blunt reminder that God does not necessarily share our interests. Jesus’ second remark is uncomfortable evidence that we cannot always trust our motives, even when the law is on our side. Viewed from the perspective of the man who made the request, this was a question of justice and equity. Jesus, on the other hand, perceived that it was a symptom of his greed.

Jesus’ blunt refusal to consider this man’s demand uncovers a dark truth about our impatience toward God. It suggests that sometimes our prayers are marked by what might be described as a kind of atheism. Not a denial of God’s existence but dismissal of the personal dimension of prayer. We are no more interested in God than we might be in the clerk at the counter who hands us our merchandise. The important thing for us is the answer. Not the one who grants our request.

In his book Beginning to Pray, Anthony Bloom reminds us that the intensity of our praying is not necessarily evidence of devotion. He asks us to think of the warmth and depth of our prayer when it concerns someone we love or something that matters to our lives. “Does it mean that God matters to you?” Bloom asks. “No, it does not. It simply means that the subject matter of your prayer matters to you.”

I am not saying that our requests are trivial or even necessarily selfish. I suspect that for this man in the crowd, receiving his inheritance was not trivial at all. It was a very big thing. Perhaps he was depending on it. But sometimes the things we are waiting for from God grow so large in our estimation that they stand between us and God. They may even become more important to us than God Himself.

Unequal Treatment

Sometimes God’s responses to our prayers seem uneven. He does not treat everyone the same. It may seem to us that God bestows answers too quickly on those who have ignored Him. They are excited about getting an answer to their prayer. It is as if they have discovered a world that they did not know existed, and in a way, they have. We are excited with them, at first. But after a while, there is something about their praise reports that may irk us. We have been praying for many of the same things and are still waiting. Why do their answers seem to come so quickly? Surely, it cannot be that they have more faith than us?

God is not a vending machine.

It is possible, of course, that they do have more faith. In Christ’s day, it seemed that those who knew the most about Scripture also had the greatest trouble believing Jesus. Faith does not always correlate with knowledge of Scripture or with spiritual age. Some who know relatively little in comparison with us may outstrip us in faith. While those who have walked with Christ a long time are sometimes still weak in faith. But this is not the only, perhaps not even the primary, reason for the difference. God’s dealings with us are personal in the realm of prayer, just as they are in everything else. God is not a vending machine that thoughtlessly dispenses the blessings we want when we punch the button of prayer. Neither is He a kind of heavenly bureaucrat who doles out the same portions to those standing in the prayer line. God’s answers are suited to His purposes for us as much as they are to our needs.

A Symptom of our Fear

In an essay on the efficacy of prayer, C. S. Lewis describes a startling observation about prayer he once heard from an experienced Christian: “I have seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that I thought miraculous,” this person said. “But they usually come at the beginning: before conversion, or soon after it. As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer. The refusals, too, are not only more frequent; they become more unmistakable, more emphatic.”

The impatience we feel while waiting for God to answer our prayers is really a symptom of fear. We worry that God may reject our request. What is more, this fear is not without a warrant. Jesus’ blunt rejection of the man in the crowd is one of many refusals recorded in Scripture. But even without these, our own experience is testimony enough to prove that God does not always give us what we want when we want it.

God will grant some requests merely because we ask, as long as our request is accompanied by faith. Scripture says that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in faith will be saved (Acts 10:21; Rom. 10:13; cf. Joel 2:32). Anyone who lacks wisdom is encouraged to ask for it (James 1:5–7). But the majority of our prayers fall into a category that we might describe as discretionary. The outcome is uncertain. God may grant them, or He might choose not to do so. Even if He does give us what we want, we do not control the timing. Another person may receive the answer in a moment, while we must wait for months and even years.

Waiting as an Act of Faith

Waiting for God is a fundamental discipline of faith. The closer we are to the end of the age, the more it will be required of us. “Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming,” James 5:7–8 urges. “See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.” The farming analogy in this passage does more than point to waiting as an inevitable fact of life. It is a reminder that a fundamental conviction about the goodness of God must accompany our waiting (2 Pet. 1:3). We are not merely waiting to see what will happen with our request. We are waiting for God to act on our behalf. He who hears our prayer is the one “who causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). Our waiting is energized further by the certainty that we will not have to wait long, at least by God’s standard of time. “The Lord’s coming is near,” James assures. 2 Peter 3:9 makes a similar promise when it says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

An old hymn describes God as “unresting, unhasting, and silent as light.” But the Bible says that God is in a hurry. According to Scripture, God watches over His people the way a cook waits for a pot to boil, or the watchman on the wall eagerly looks for the coming of dawn (Isa. 60:22; Jer. 1:12–13). Despite what the hymn writer says, speed is a characteristic of all God’s saving acts. That’s because the speed of God is the speed of redemption.

Faith & Stupid

This is the sign you've been looking for neon signage
~ John Koessler ~ 5 Comments

Recently, I had to make a decision. Not life-changing but significant enough to require some thought. It also involved money. Not that much, but still, it was money. Under normal circumstances, it would have taken me a few minutes. What gave me pause was that this decision had to do with a goal that I have been working toward for several years and have not quite achieved. I wondered whether it was time to throw in the towel.

Actually, what I really wondered was what God thought about it. Was He saying, “John, keep it up. You’ll achieve your goal eventually.” Or was He shaking His head because I hadn’t figured out that it is a dead-end? How many disappointments does it take to realize that God wants us to move on? To put it another way, what’s the difference between faith and stupid? How does one tell the difference between persistence in faith and stubborn refusal to acknowledge that God is not behind your agenda?

After meditating on this question for several days, I did what any theologically reflective person would do. I posted the question on social media. What struck me was how certain many of those who responded seemed to be. They made it sound easy. The difference was a matter of humility, someone said. It was merely a question of discerning whether you were seeking to glorify God or yourself another proposed. Or it was a simple question of guidance. All you have to do is follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. Some seemed to point to circumstances as the deciding factor. You move forward until you have to stop. Others sounded as if the solution was more a matter of paying closer attention to an inner feeling of some kind.

Who Are You Calling Stupid?

Perhaps they are all right to some degree. But one thing is clear to me. The difference between faith and stupid is not as apparent as one might think. To the unbeliever, faith looks like stupid, and to the believer, stupid sometimes looks like faith. For this reason, the best place to begin is with a definition. Faith, on its most fundamental level, is simply taking God at His word. Faith is an exercise in trust, and the effectiveness of faith depends entirely on its object. Place your faith in an unreliable person or an undependable object, and it makes little difference how firmly you believe. You will still be disappointed in the end.

According to this definition, the primary difference between faith and stupid is a matter of presumption. Stupid is a conviction that goes beyond God. Likewise, stubbornness is what stupid looks like when we apply it to action. Stubbornness is perseverance that is misdirected. We keep moving but in the wrong direction. Yet, like Peter, when he attempted to dissuade Jesus from taking the path that would lead to the cross, we are convinced that we are acting in God’s interest (Matt. 16:21–23).

The difference between faith and stupid is a matter of presumption.

If stupid sounds harsh to modern ears, perhaps we would prefer the Bible’s term for this, which is “folly.” It sounds more elegant, but it’s really no better. Among other things, folly’s most fundamental characteristic is its lack of common sense. “Even as fools walk along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are,” Ecclesiastes 10:3 complains. The fool ignores the obvious. The signposts are there, but the fool doesn’t bother to consider them. He prefers to go his own way. It can be hard to discern the difference between persistent faith and stubborn refusal because we are prone to folly. Like Peter, our natural bent is to be of the wrong mind. We often replace God’s concerns with our own.

The Cure for Folly

The good news is that there is an antidote for stupid. The cure for folly is wisdom, and the Bible tells us that wisdom is offered freely to any who will take it. James 1:5 promises, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” James goes on to qualify this wildly generous promise by warning that: “. . . when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do” (James 1:6–8).

I used to think that his point was that, to receive this wisdom, we must believe that God will give it to us before we ask. There are similar promises in Scripture (Matt. 21:22; Mark 11:24). But I suspect that there is more in view here. We have trouble accepting God’s wisdom not because we think that He will refuse to grant it to us. It is because we are not convinced that it is wisdom. The cure for folly is not only to take God at His word but to trust that He has a better idea of what is going on than we do. Where God’s directive is clear, we do not need to question. Nor do we necessarily need to understand why He has commanded it to be so. It is enough to know that it is God who has told us what to do.

But where there is no explicit directive, God calls for a different kind of faith. We might call this cooperative or even collaborative faith. The journey of the Christian life is more than a simple matter of command and response. As those who have been created in His image, God grants us the dignity of making plans and choosing options. We set goals and strive to reach them. We may move in one direction, then decide it is not the right one and change course. As Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”

What is more, neither our success nor our failure in what we attempt is necessarily a reliable measure of either God’s will or His approval. Solomon’s career was at its peak when his heart “turned away from the Lord” (1 Kings 11:9). Jesus’ moment of victory came at the point when His life and ministry appeared to be an abject failure (John 19:30).

Pillar & Cloud

We tend to envy ancient Israel because of the way God guided them during their wilderness journey. Exodus 13:21 says, “By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.” We would like a pillar and cloud of our own. Yet, the certainty that God was guiding Israel did not keep them from questioning their direction (Num. 21:5). Nor did it protect them from disobedience or rebellion. Knowing what God wants us to do doesn’t always mean that we want to do it.

 Even when God guides us, He does not always spell out the fine details in advance. According to Hebrews 11:8, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” Likewise, the apostle Paul declared, “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there” (Acts 20:22). Actually, Paul knew a little of what awaited him. After saying this, he went on to add: “I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace” (Acts 20:23–24). Divine guidance does not come with a detailed map, but it does provide a trajectory.

Divine guidance does not come with a detailed map.

Those in Christ do not need a pillar of fire or a cloud of glory because the Holy Spirit indwells them. Yet even His indwelling presence is no guarantee that there will not be times when we feel uncertain about the direction we should take. Acts 16 describes how Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia because the Holy Spirit kept them from preaching the word in the province of Asia. It would be interesting to know exactly how the Holy Spirit closed the door, but Scripture doesn’t tell us. Luke says that when they tried to enter Bithynia, the Holy Spirit wouldn’t allow them to go there either. One almost gets the impression of Paul and his team bumbling around Asia, trying one direction and then another, until God finally sends him a vision in the night of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him to “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” In Acts 16:10, Luke writes, “After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.”

If even Paul sometimes felt muddled about which direction to go in the age of miracles, we should not feel too badly if we also have moments when we lack clarity about whether or not to continue on a certain path. When it comes to what God has written, faith is a matter of taking God at His word. And when it comes to those things that God has not spelled out for us, faith is a matter of trusting that He will still guide us, using ordinary and sometimes even extraordinary means to take us where He wants us to go. Desire, circumstances, and the mysterious prompting of the Holy Spirit all work together to move us along the path that God has laid before us. And even if we happen to make a few missteps along the way, the destination is still sure because we are not traveling alone. “I am with you always,” Jesus says, “to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

The Recent History of God

~ John Koessler ~ 1 Comment

Where does one begin when speaking of God? A biography usually starts at the beginning with its subject’s birth and ancestry. But the God of Scripture, unlike the gods of myth, is uncreated and eternal. He has no beginning or point of origin. He has no ancestors. For this reason, God’s account of Himself in Scripture begins not with His creation but with ours. If the Bible is the history of God, it is only a record of recent history.

Why this had to be the case should be obvious. God’s existence in what we call the past is infinite. It is not possible to grasp, let alone record. God’s eternal nature is also unlimited in its power and scope. He is not bound by time or space. He is not dependent on anyone or anything but sustains everything that exists (Acts 17:25; Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:17). The full scope of all that God is and has done is beyond our view. There is too much to know and too much to write. Even if it could be written, it is doubtful that we would be able to comprehend it.

The Bible only records what we might call God’s recent history because it begins with our history. It is a mistake to think of the Bible as the autobiography of God. It is just the opposite. The Bible is God’s biography of us. From the Bible we know something about what God is like. God has shown us this through what He has said and done in our world. The Bible also tells us about ourselves. In many respects, the Bible tells humanity’s story as much as it does God’s.

The theologians have a word for this. They call it revelation. Divine self-revelation is where all knowledge of God begins. We only know about God because God has chosen to reveal Himself to us. Moreover, what we know about God is dependent upon what God has chosen to reveal. We cannot put God on a slab to dissect Him to expose all His parts. We cannot watch Him through a microscope or find Him in the world’s most powerful telescope. If we are to know what God is like, He must show us Himself.

God has done this in two primary ways. God has revealed Himself by actions and in words. The Bible also shows that God has done this in two different modes. One is broad. The other is narrow. There are some things that God has revealed to everyone. They are plain for all who are willing to see. These truths are expressed in the universal language of creation. This is what the Psalmist means when He says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1). The Psalmist goes on to describe creation as a kind of non-verbal communication that “goes out into all the earth” (v. 2).

This general revelation of God is also communicated to us internally. Because this internal message operates on the level of conscience, its function is primarily negative. The primary purpose of internal general revelation is to show us that we are not like God. The apostle Paul explains its negative function when he says: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. (Rom. 1:18–19).

Another important feature of this general revelation is its limited scope. Neither the external general revelation of creation nor the internal revelation of conscience can tell us everything that can be known about God. They do not even tell us the most important things that we should know about Him. This mode of revelation covers only a few basics. In a way, general revelation is God’s kindergarten, limiting its message to God’s eternal power and His divine nature. General revelation tells us that God exists, that He is the creator, and that we are not Him.

Fortunately, God has also chosen to reveal Himself on another band. This is a mode that the theologians call “special” revelation. Special revelation is more narrow than general revelation. While general revelation is available to everyone, special revelation was experienced by only a few. God revealed Himself to a few chosen messengers who passed what they had heard from God down to others. Special revelation is also narrow in its focus. The message of special revelation primarily has to do with God’s plan to redeem humanity from sin. Special revelation was personal and ultimately verbal. The things God said and did were written down and collected in the Scriptures. They describe His saving acts and interpret those actions for us. They tell us what God expects of us and give us a glimpse of what God will do in the future.

Divine self-revelation is where all knowledge of God begins.

When you read the Bible, you quickly discover that God did not make Himself known all at once. Instead, He revealed Himself in stages. This progressive revelation of God reaches its peak in the person and work of Jesus Christ. As the writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews observeed, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe” (Heb. 1:1–2).

God, who dwells outside of history, entered history to make Himself known once and for all in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Not only does Jesus reveal God to us in human terms, but He also shows us what God had in mind when He created the world. If the Bible is a history of the human race described from God’s perspective, Jesus Christ is the key that unlocks that history for us. Jesus is the bridge that connects God’s story with human history. Jesus is the end toward which all God’s words and works in the world tend. Jesus is the sum of all that God has to say about Himself.

Revelation shows us what we can know about God. But the fact that God has shown us Himself in this way reveals something about us as well. It proves that there is something that stands in the way of our understanding God. The word the Bible uses for this is sin. Not surprisingly, this is where the Bible’s history of God begins. Not just with creation but with humanity’s departure from God through disobedience.

Therefore, if we want to describe God’s history with humanity in simple terms, we could probably articulate it in three sentences. God made us. We rejected Him. So God took on human nature and came to redeem us in person. The Bible’s revelation of God is not a collection of vague philosophies or abstract facts. Everything that revelation has to say about God has redemption at its center. Everything that can be said about divine revelation, the discipline that we call theology, can pretty much be divided into five categories: the nature of God, the nature of humanity, the person and work of Jesus Christ, the nature of redemption, and God’s plan for bringing this stage of His history to a close.

Where does one begin when speaking about God? We begin with God. The only way to begin with God is to begin with what God has said. Everything that we can say about God depends upon what God has said Himself. Scripture tells us that God has shown Himself both by word and action. But between these two, it is Scripture that must have the primary place. Scripture both describes and interprets God’s words and actions for us.

But why would God reveal Himself to us in the first place? It is not so that we would accumulate facts about Him. The goal of revelation is faith. We study Scripture so that we might know about God, and by knowing, that we might come to believe. For, as the writer of the book of Hebrews observed, “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).

Faith, Anxiety, and Sloth

~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago, I was diagnosed with a form of cancer and was treated. The treatment was successful, but I found it hard to enjoy that success because I was afraid my cancer would return. Once a year I am required to take a blood test to make sure that my condition hasn’t changed. During the weeks that lead up to the test, I always find it hard to concentrate. I feel agitated and unfocused. I am busy but not productive. In Luke 21:34 Jesus warned: “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap.” According to Jesus, we can waste our energy in worrying just as easily as we can on carousing. This anxiety is a peculiar form of sloth.

The stereotype of sloth is a lazy person. Someone who won’t get off the couch or get out of bed in the morning for work. But sloth is much larger than the stereotype. The way of sloth is a path of ill-conceived short-cuts and ignored responsibilities. Sloth practices neglect under the guise of simplicity and mistakes apathy for ease. Sloth is a sin of omission, but that does not necessarily mean that sloth is inactive. Sloth is a sin of rationalization. Those who ignore responsibility always have an excuse for not doing what they are supposed to do.

Sloth is a sin of omission, but that does not necessarily mean that sloth is inactive.

Sloth exerts the minimum required effort and would prefer to exert no effort at all. When sloth makes an effort, it is usually under duress. Sloth is listless and half-hearted. Imagine the worst stereotype of the sort of service we receive at a bureaucratic hub like the division of motor vehicles and you have a picture of sloth. Sloth seems like a pretty harmless sin compared to the sort of things that others do. We kind of admire it. That is until we have to depend upon a slothful person. Or are put into a position where we have to work with them. Or are waiting in line.

The sin that the ancients called sloth includes laziness, but it involves more. Sloth can manifest itself in many forms. At times it looks like ennui, an immobilizing lethargy that leeches away our interest in those things that ought to concern us. But sloth can also be active and profligate, causing us to squander our time and energy on meaningless trifles at the expense of other obligations.

Sometimes sloth is the person who can’t get up off the couch, but it is also the person who won’t sit down. When sloth manifests itself as agitation, it is filled with the kind of empty activity that fails to provide results, rest, or even pleasure. The agitation of sloth is to work what junk food is to nutrition. It burns hot but adds no value. We are busy but busy with the wrong things. In its agitated form, sloth is a particular form of dissipation, squandering our energies in empty pursuits. These may be pursuits of the flesh, the concerns of ordinary life, or even misguided spiritual pursuits. 

Sometimes sloth is the person who can’t get up off the couch, but it is also the person who won’t sit down.

Sometimes this agitated form of sloth is situational. It is the result circumstances. Some situation comes into our lives over which we have no control: a family crisis or a medical diagnosis. Things change at work, and we are uncertain how it will affect us. Suddenly we find ourselves in a new normal that is a cause for worry. In other cases it is result of temperament. Some of us have a natural tendency to worry about things that are purely hypothetical. Our anxiety does not spring from things that might take place. It does little good to remind ourselves that none of these things has happened to us yet. It is possibility that grips us not the actuality. In these cases sloth is not so much a matter of laziness as it is paralysis. Anxious sloth can also have the opposite effect so that we exhaust ourselves in an attempt to prepare for all the possibilities and ignore the bread and butter concerns of daily life.

I have learned from painful experience that anxiety adds no value to my life. The anxiety I feel will not change the outcome of the test. Nor can it prepare me to face a relapse of my cancer, should it come pass. Anxiety only drains my energy and distracts me from the things that I need to do. Anxiety creates an environment where sloth can flourish by pointing out our helplessness without pointing us in the direction of God’s loving care or powerful support. Anxiety whispers in our ear each night but not in reassuring tones. Its counsels are counsels of despair.

We think that the solution to this problem is more power or a change in our circumstances. But Jesus points us in a different direction. He urges us to view our powerlessness through the lens of faith. “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” Jesus says. “Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matt. 6:25-27)

The implied answer to Jesus’ first question is yes. We are much more valuable than the birds of the air who are cared for by our heavenly Father. The answer to His second question is no. Worrying cannot add a single hour to your life. In Luke’s version, Jesus adds, “Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?” (Luke 12:26). The impossible thing for us is a “very little thing” to God. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that God will always give us what we want. What it does mean is that God will always have our back. What does this truth mean for those of us who sometimes suffer from the paralysis of worry? It means that the God who gives us our life as a gift will sustain that life until it is time for Him to reclaim it.

The God who gives us our life as a gift will sustain that life until it is time for Him to reclaim it.

I know that the day is coming when my body will eventually fail me. My cancer may never come back. Indeed, I hope and pray that it doesn’t. But sooner or later, my body will betray me. My heart or my lungs will give out. Some unexpected disease will claim me. Or my aging body will call it a day and quietly shut down. My body will betray me, but God never will. The fact that we are not in control does not necessarily mean that things are out of control, even when things are at their worst.

Os Guinness has said, “Sloth is so much the climate of the modern age that it is hard to recognize as a deadly sin.” Guinness calls sloth, “the underlying condition of a secular era.” He might also have said the same of agitation. Agitation is so much the climate of the modern age that we don’t recognize it as agitation. It is simply the environment in which we live. It is also the underlying paralysis which keeps our culture in a perpetual state of motion but which does not deliver us to any satisfying destination.

Our agitation is actually pretension.  It is a disguise we wear for our own benefit, a mere affectation we use to persuade ourselves that we have more power than is truly the case. And in my own case, it is a kind of sedative which I use to distract myself from the fear I feel. Because, in the end, it is not cancer that I fear but death. And the only remedy for death is Jesus Christ. He is the one who shared our humanity “so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb. 2:14-15). Even though I cannot always feel the truth of this promise, I have staked my life on it. And my death.

John’s latest book Practicing the Present: The Neglected Art of Living in the Now (Moody Publishers) is now available. Order your copy today.

Help My Unbelief

~ John Koessler ~ 3 Comments

The first believers I knew talked a lot about faith. As far as I could tell from what they said, faith was a variable commodity. Some had more and others less. The difference mattered since the results one might expect from God depended upon the amount of faith one was able to muster. Perhaps that’s why we spent so much of our time declaring our faith. When it came to prayer, it seemed that quantity was associated with volume. The more faith we wanted to prove that we had, the louder we prayed. I am not sure who we were trying to reassure more. Was it for God’s benefit or ours? It did not seem to make a difference either way. I felt no more certain no matter what the volume, while God did not seem to give my loud prayers any more attention than my soft.

In those days, it also seemed to me that the measure of one’s faith was determined by the size of the request. I thought faith was a muscle and praying was like weight training. The more you exercised it, the greater it grew. The larger the request, the greater the faith. I decided that my requests were too timid. I was asking for pennies when I should have been seeking gold. I decided that if I was going to become a person of faith, I needed to believe God for greater things.

I decided my requests were too timid. I was asking for pennies when I should have been seeking gold.

About that time, my mother’s health failed. She grew so weak that my father had to carry her to the car and drive her to the hospital. The doctors performed exploratory surgery, and she grew worse. I stood at her bedside and prayed that God would heal her. She died instead. I prayed that God would raise her from the dead, the way that Christ called Lazarus from the grave. The casket remained closed. In the months after my mother’s death, my father’s alcoholism worsened. I prayed that God would deliver him from bondage. His alcoholism eventually killed him.

But this is a one-sided picture. It leaves out all the prayers that God did answer, requests both great and trivial. They seem to fade in my memory. Somehow, it is the refusals that stick. Perhaps I don’t want to think about the others because they remind me how often I have been anxious about trivial matters. Each time I have asked for bread, the Father has never given me a stone. Or maybe it is because listening to the full scope of my requests is an uncomfortable reminder of how shrill my voice often sounds when I cry out to God. I may come into God’s presence kneeling like a petitioner, but I speak to Him as if He were a servant. My requests sound more like demands. I sometimes wonder why I even have to ask at all. Why doesn’t God just give me what I want?

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus invites His disciples to make requests of their Heavenly Father. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” Jesus says. “For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8). Jesus signals the Father’s welcome by piling on imperatives of invitation: “Ask…seek…knock,” Jesus urges. But there is also embedded in this language a subtle indication that the answers to our requests may not come as easily as we might like. Before we can receive we must ask. Before we find we will need to seek. Before we may enter we must knock.

“Ask…seek…knock,” Jesus urges us. But there is also embedded in this language a subtle indication that the answers to our requests may not come as easily as we might like.

There is a hint of persistence in all of this. For some things, we must ask and keep on asking. We will seek for some time before we find what we want. We will knock, and the door will not swing open for us at once. Nevertheless, Jesus invites all those who are His to bring their requests. The quiet reminder of our need to persist, which is implied in both the word choice and the verb tense, is meant to relieve our fears. Delay does not always signify refusal and refusal is not necessarily a rejection. Like any parent, the fact that our Heavenly Father does not always give us what we want does not mean that He does not love us.

It is a mistake to measure our faith based on the size of the request. It is equally a mistake to place our confidence in the measure of our faith. Some of us have more faith than others. But if prayer is a lever, it is God who acts as the fulcrum. The power of faith depends upon God not on the size of our request. It only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move a mountain (Matthew 17:20). The thing we ask of God, whether it is great or small, is not the object of our faith. Our faith rests in God.

God is not the object of our faith either. God is not an object at all. We are in a relationship with Him. When we objectify God, we turn Him into an idol. Jesus condemned the objectification of God in prayer when He warned about the babbling of pagans, who “think they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6:7). Prayer does not work like magic. You cannot recite a formula and compel God to do what you want. Prayer is a relational act, and a central feature of any relational request is the right of refusal. Even a child can refuse, though there are often consequences. It is only the slave who cannot refuse, and God will be no one’s slave.

Prayer is a relational act, and a central feature of any relational request is the right of refusal.

Of course, this may offer only cold comfort to those for whom God’s answer is no. Given a choice between a genuine relationship with God and the thing we want, many of us would choose the thing. A relationship seems like small compensation compared to health or love or that job we had hoped to get. We aren’t exactly mercenaries where God is concerned, but we are often little better. We are like the crowd that came looking for Jesus on the other side of the lake after He had fed the multitude. “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill” Jesus chided. “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval” (John 6:26-27). When the crowd asked Jesus what kind of work He had in mind, His answer to them was faith. “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:29).

Well, we do believe. Or at least, we want to believe. We want to believe enough to get what we want. I admire the great men and women of faith whose biographies once fueled my fantasies of how my Christian life would turn out. But I do not see myself in them. Instead, my prayers sound more the man in Mark 9 who brought his demon tormented son to the disciples. “Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid” the man told Jesus. “I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.”

I admire the great men and women of faith whose biographies once fueled my fantasies of how my Christian life would turn out. But I do not see myself in them.

I can easily imagine a note of reproach in the man’s voice. “What kind of slipshod operation are you running here, Jesus?” the man seems to say. But Jesus refuses to accept the blame. “You unbelieving generation,” Jesus says, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.” To whom is this rebuke directed? Is Jesus speaking to the father? Is He criticizing the disciples? The answer is that Jesus seems to be talking to both.

Whatever the disciples’ failure was, it was not a failure of confidence. They seemed to have plenty of confidence. They were as surprised as anyone that their attempt to help the boy had failed. Later on, when they were out of earshot the crowd, they asked Jesus to tell them where they had gone wrong. “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” they asked. “This kind can come out only by prayer” Jesus replied. So if the disciples hadn’t attempted to drive the demon out with prayer, what had they done? At least in this instance, theirs was a faith without reference to God. Indeed, this wasn’t faith at all. It was confidence. They had cast out demons before. They could do it again. They thought they had this.

Whatever the disciples’ failure was, it was not a failure of confidence.

Once in Jesus’ presence, the demon threw the boy into a convulsion. He rolled around on the ground and foamed at the mouth. Sounding like a doctor, Jesus questioned the father about the boy’s condition. “How long has he been like this?” Jesus asked. “From childhood,” the father answered. “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

If I were writing the story, Jesus would give His bumbling disciples a sidelong glance to remind them of their failure. He would say something compassionate to the father and command the demon to depart. Instead, Jesus reproves the father. “‘If you can’?” Jesus says. “‘Everything is possible for one who believes.’”

I see myself in the father. Only my point of doubt is slightly different. It is not “if you can” but “if you will.” I know that Jesus can. I’m just not sure that He will. Especially when it comes to those things that I have been praying about for a long time and haven’t seen any evidence of His interest in my case. The father’s prayer is also my own. “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

Here is the measure of faith that God seeks. It is not great faith, equal to the size of the request that we are making. It is not even perfect faith, one that is unmixed with any doubt. It is not self-confidence. If anything, it is the opposite. To me, this man’s request is the purest form of prayer. It is not the blustering assurance of the apostles. Nor is it the scolding complaint of the father in His first approach. This is the cry of the helpless.

God does not scorn our requests, but He will not be manipulated by them either. We cannot use faith as a lever to force God to do our bidding. We cannot bully God with our prayers or make Him feel guilty. Indeed, Jesus has assured us that such measures are not needed. “Do not be like them,” Jesus says when He compares the prayer of faith to the prayer pagans, “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8).

Here, then, is what faith looks like. Faith is trust. It is the assurance of a child who relies on a parent to provide what is needed. Faith is a trust, which does not always make us feel comfortable, but which is nevertheless convinced that God ultimately knows what is best and that He will do what is right. Faith is our helpless reliance upon God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief.

John’s latest book Practicing the Present: The Neglected Art of Living in the Now (Moody Publishers) is now available. Order your copy today.

When Faith Fails

~ John Koessler ~ 4 Comments

Dale and Nancy had just started dating when someone who claimed to be speaking on God’s behalf told them that their relationship would “flow like a river.” They took it as a sign and got married. It didn’t take long for things to unravel. Dale was controlling and abusive. He went back to some of the habits of his pre-Christian days. Drugs, pornography, and threats of violence turned the beautiful promise they had heard into a nightmare. If you had asked Dale and Nancy why they married so quickly, I’m pretty sure they would have said that it was a simple act of faith. They believed they were supposed to be together.

People make decisions like this all the time. Someone hears a sermon about the unreached masses and quits his job to go into the ministry. An older couple decides to adopt after their own kids are grown and gone because they believe it’s what God wants. But faith decisions don’t have to be big. Sometimes they’re small. We say something to a stranger because we feel the prompting of the Spirit. We give money to a panhandler we pass on the street. Sometimes things work out. Sometimes, like Dale and Nancy, the wheels come off, and we’re left wondering whether we got it wrong. Maybe it wasn’t God’s voice after all.

Simple or Simplistic Faith?

When I was a new believer, we used to talk a lot about having a simple “childlike” faith. But looking back on some of the things we did, what we practiced was not faith but naiveté. Our faith wasn’t simple; it was simplistic. At times, maybe even childish. One Saturday night a bunch of us piled into a car and drove down into the city of Detroit. We had no real destination in mind. We expected to be “led” by the Holy Spirit, stopping to pray at every intersection before deciding which way to turn. We ended up in a bad part of town, where we stumbled on a drunken man lying in a doorway. “He must be the reason God sent us here,” Ron said. Ron, a shifty-eyed prophet with a receding hairline and a penchant for falling into the folding chairs whenever the Spirit came upon him, was one of the self-appointed leaders of our little group. Ron thought we should take the stranger with us, but the man only wanted a few dollars to buy another drink. Despite his protests, we pulled him to his feet, bundled him into the car, and drove back to the suburbs.

Our faith wasn’t simple; it was simplistic. At times, maybe even childish.

The next day Ron brought our new friend to church and asked the pastor to take a special offering. The pastor politely declined. Maybe the pastor was suspicious. Perhaps he didn’t think it was the best way to help the man. Whatever the reason, Ron didn’t take the refusal well. He stood up in the church service, and in a prophetic tone declared, “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” Then he and the stranger walked out, followed by several chagrined church members who offered him money.

In a day or two, the stranger disappeared. Ron didn’t know where he had gone. Some hinted that he might not have been a man at all but an angel that we had entertained “unawares.” But I suspected that the poor fellow had made his way back to the doorway where we first found him. The whole affair bothered me. Was it really God who had guided us? Or had we merely gone downtown on a whim? Was ours a bold act of faith or a naive exercise of middle-class guilt? It is tempting to think that the answer these questions is in the outcome. If God had been in it, the man would have stayed, and his life would have turned around. But the stranger might have gone back to his old ways, even if God had prompted us to rescue him. Would things have been any different for my friends Dale and Nancy, if they had waited longer and gone through a traditional courtship? Perhaps. But there are plenty of people who have taken the long path only to call it quits in the end. Joshua Harris comes to mind.

Sincerity Instead of Faith

Sometimes, what we think of as faith is merely sincerity. We are convinced that we are doing the right thing. We think we are acting in God’s interest and at His prompting, but we are mistaken. Not only do we misunderstand what God wants from us, we misinterpret our motives. Like James and John, who wanted to call down fire upon the Samaritan village that refused to welcome Jesus, we think we are doing God’s will (Luke 9:51-56). In reality, we don’t know what kind of spirit we are of. James and John had sincerity enough to spare. What they lacked was self-awareness

In the past few months, we have seen a flurry of notable church leaders turn their back on the things they once believed. We want to know how such a thing can happen. How can people whose faith once seemed so prominent suddenly throw it away? Many conclude that such people were never really Christians to begin with. They “went out from us” because “were not of us” (1 John 2:19). Perhaps this is true. The Bible has many warnings about those who profess the faith but are imposters (1 Tim. 4:1).

But I wonder if some of those who have walked away believe that it is God who has broken faith.  They have turned their backs because the Christianity they embraced did not deliver on its promise. In most cases, as far as I can tell from the outside, it was not the gospel promise itself that has disappointed them but something else. It is more a vision of what their lives would be like if they only believed that has failed them. They are like those that Linda Kay Klein profiles in her book Pure, a blistering critique of the purity movement of the 1980s. Many in the movement seemed to believe that if they followed the rules and pursued sexual purity with a passion, they would live happily ever after.  Klein describes the reaction of Muriel, one of the subjects she interviewed, this way: “How could she believe anything evangelicalism taught her if the one thing they said was most important–remain pure before marriage and you will have a blissful sexual life after marriage and be supported by the larger community–wasn’t true.”

The Game is Rigged

Of course, it doesn’t have to be sex. The promise we believe might be something else. Maybe it is the expectation that the church’s leaders will behave like shepherds and care for the church. Maybe it is the conviction that if I put Jesus first, I will succeed. I’ll get the job I want. My ministry will grow and expand. Life will go the way I want. Sometimes the things that shake the foundations of our faith are embarrassingly small, but the basic reasoning is always the same. I have believed, so why aren’t things working out better for me? I am following Jesus, so why isn’t He doing more for me? Why aren’t things easier?

I am following Jesus, so why isn’t He doing more for me? Why aren’t things easier?

These kinds of questions aren’t asked just by apostates and people who have been taken in by the prosperity gospel. They are more common among people of genuine faith than you might think. This is the sort of questioning the Psalmist describes in Psalm 73: “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (Psalm 73:1-3). The Old Testament patriarch Job also had questions for God. Job’s questions are the obverse of Asaph’s. Job doesn’t ask, “Why do the wicked prosper?” but instead “Why do the righteous suffer?” In each of these cases, the frame is a narrow one. The circumstances that cause us to question God’s goodness, and sometimes even our faith, are not always as noble as theirs. Our disappointments aren’t great disappointments like those of Asaph or Job. Too often, they are petty and self-absorbed. But for some reason that doesn’t make them easier for us to bear.

To the person who struggles with such questions there only seems to be two possible answers. Either there is something wrong with us, or there is something wrong with God. Of course, anyone who has spent time in the realm of faith knows that the latter possibility is not really on the table. The game is rigged, and the odds always favor the house. God is never wrong. The problem is always us. But the thing that is wrong with us may not be what we think. We thought the problem was in our execution. We weren’t playing the game the right way. If we just tried a little harder–if we followed the rules–we could make it work for us. When it doesn’t, we are tempted to give up not only on ourselves but on God. We are tempted to give up on God so the fault won’t be with us.

We are tempted to give up on God so the fault won’t be with us.

When my oldest son was about to graduate from high school, I had one of those parental conversations with him about adulthood, duty, and the necessity of doing things one doesn’t really want to do. When I was finished, he said, “So what you’re telling me is that life basically sucks.” That wasn’t what I was telling him, but I could see why he thought it was. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you think I’m saying something similar about God. Does it seem to you that God’s primary agenda is to disappoint you? Perhaps you think I am saying that the “chief end of man” is to suck it up and lower your expectations. If God intends to leave us disappointed, His goal is that we would be disappointed with ourselves and the simplistic, bargaining faith to which we are so addicted. Like a doctor who must break a bone to set it, God shatters our misaligned expectations, so that faith will have room to grow in the right direction. He does not do this lightly but carefully. And often, I think, with tears.

The Danger of Smugness

What are we to make of the defections from the faith of so many prominent Christians? I think we ought to be careful not to be smug in our rush to judgment about them. It may be true that they were never “of us” to begin with. But we too are guilty of naïve faith and unreasonable expectations of the Christian life. We shouldn’t shrug off their repudiation of the foundational truths of the Christian faith. Their defection is a sin, and their loss is a tragedy. They are responsible to God for the decision they have made. However, some of the comments I have seen about their departure from the faith sound too much like gloating to me. Besides, we don’t yet know how their story will end.

Several years after my friends Dale and Nancy divorced, I talked with Nancy on the phone. She told me how terrible the experience had been for her and how, after the divorce, she had walked away from the church and from God. The promise had failed. She spent years feeling like damaged goods. She believed that God no longer had a purpose for her life. Then one day she realized that what she had believed about herself was a lie. Not only was God waiting, He was welcoming. At the time she and I spoke, Dale was still far from God. In a way, their story is a kind of parable. Some who have renounced their faith will discover that what they have rejected is not God or the gospel but a counterfeit. Others will continue to live in a way which suggests that “they were not of us” to begin with. But either way, God will be waiting.

John’s latest book Practicing the Present: The Neglected Art of Living in the Now (Moody Publishers) is now available. Order your copy today.

Shadow of a Doubt

~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

I had a friend in college who said that Jesus appeared to her in her dreams. The two had long and meaningful conversations. I was terribly jealous. I wondered why Jesus didn’t appear to me too. Then one night I had a dream about Jesus. He sat at the end of my bed and spoke to me. He didn’t look like I had imagined he would. For one thing, he had blond hair that looked like it had been shaped by a stylist. He grinned at me, his white teeth shining in the dark. He looked like the host from a TV morning show. But it was the conversation that bothered me most. He just wasn’t making any sense. When at last I realized that what he was saying to me was only gibberish, I woke up.

I have to confess that my first thought was, “Yeah, that’s about right. That’s just the sort of Jesus who would appear to me.” Not the Jesus I read about in the gospels. No, I get surfer dude Jesus with blow-dried hair and dental implants. Then, for a brief moment, I felt a stab of panic. What if it really was Jesus? What if, up close and personal, Jesus turns out to be a figure sold to me by the church’s public relations machine? Would I someday discover that what I believed about Jesus had all been a carefully manufactured façade? Like a celebrity who has evaded his handlers, would he prove to be only ordinary in the end? What if the light that had blinded me on the road to Damascus was only the flash of the paparazzi’s cameras? Or, perhaps even worse, what if I got to know the real Jesus and realized that I didn’t especially like him? I know that such a question is unimaginable to most evangelicals. But you have to admit that such a thing does sometimes happen in our other important relationships. We all have people to whom we must “relate’ but with whom we feel distant or uncomfortable. It may be a boss, coworker, parent, or sometimes even a friend.

Evangelicals often say that Christianity is a “relationship” and not a religion. I understand what we are trying to do when we say this. We want to humanize Jesus for people (as if the incarnation were not enough). We do not want them to confuse faith with the rituals that are associated with the Faith.  But sometimes I wonder if we make too much of it. Is it possible that the “relationship” frame is as liable to misunderstanding as the “religion” frame? Many of our notions of relationship are sentimental. This is especially true of our idealized relationships. What is more, many of our relationships (especially in the dating realm) are voluntary associations that are a function of personal attraction. We meet somebody and if we like them we enter (or attempt to enter) into a relationship with them. But what happens if, after we enter into a relationship, we find that we don’t like their personality as much as we thought we did at first? What if “relating” to the person makes us uncomfortable or our sense of that individual’s personality is elusive?

I am not suggesting that we may find, upon closer inspection, that Jesus really is the shallow creation of some public relations machine or that we will hate his personality once we finally come to know it. My point is that the rhetoric of ordinary relationships is probably not an adequate framework for understanding all that it means to be joined to Christ. Such language predisposes us to expect certain kinds of experiences with Christ that we rarely have. I can’t help noticing that Jesus’ own disciples did not always feel comfortable with him. Sometimes, like the disciples in the storm, it was because Jesus far exceeded their expectation (Luke 8:25).”Who is this?” they asked. There is a measure of distance implied in such language. The effect of such experiences on the disciples was not a sense of casual familiarity but one of awe and sometimes even terror. This does not change after the Resurrection. If anything, it intensifies the experience. When John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” comes face to face with the glorified Christ, he is so startled that he faints dead away (Rev. 1:17). At other times, the discomfort experienced with the disciples was because Jesus disappointed them. They looked for bread and Jesus offered himself instead (John 6:53-54, 60). They expected him to drive away their enemies. Instead, he surrendered to death at their hands and then walked out of the tomb they buried him in (Luke 24:19-24).

Either way, the disciples sometimes found their experience with Jesus to be profoundly unsettling. For those who were able to successfully make the transition from surprise or disappointment to faith, the result was not comfortable familiarity but a sense of mystery. There was apprehension (in the old sense of the word) but not comprehension. They were able to grasp something about Jesus but not with comprehensive understanding. John, who arguably “knew” Jesus better than any of the other disciples, tells us that such knowledge is yet to come for us (1 John 3:2).

In an essay on the subject of faith, Dorothy Sayers observes that a faith is not primarily a comfort, but a truth about ourselves. “What we in fact believe is not necessarily the theory we most desire or admire” she explains. “It is the thing that, consciously or unconsciously, we take for granted and act on.” Her friend and peer C. S. Lewis made a similar observation about faith. Faith, as Lewis defines it, is “the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” I am suggesting that the same thing is true of the “relational” faith that joins us to Jesus Christ. Although faith often includes an experiential dimension, it does not require a particular kind of emotional experience in order to be genuine. Instead, faith requires that I take certain truths about Jesus and his relation to me for granted and act upon them. The relationship that I have with Jesus Christ is not dependent upon the way I feel about the relationship. This relationship is a fact before it is an experience. As C. S. Lewis has wisely observed, it is not a mood. Indeed, according to him, one of the functions of faith is to teach your moods “where they get off.”

It was not a carefully argued apologetic that reassured me after waking from my dream. Instead, I was reassured by the Jesus I encountered in the Bible. He was nothing at all like the Christ of my imagination. He exceeded my expectations. He disappointed me too. Fairly often, I might add. On too many occasions I came to him like the disciples, with my own assumptions about what he should say and do, only to have those expectation shattered. I quickly discovered that the Jesus of the Bible was beyond my control. I could not manipulate him with my prayers, bribe him with my behavior, or wheedle him with my praise.

We often treat doubt as if it were mostly a matter of unsettled reason. If we can prove that the Bible is historically accurate or that it agrees with science, we feel that we will overcome the doubter’s objections. But I think there are other factors in play when doubt’s uncertain shadow looms over our hearts. Certainly, it is a lack of confidence. Like Eve, we hear a whispered question which undermines our thinking and unsettles our soul: “Did God say?” However, more than anything else, I suspect that most doubts arise from our own lack of imagination. We cannot really envision Jesus as he truly is. We prefer a more controllable version to the one we read about in the Scriptures. Someone who is more comfortable and predictable. If such a Jesus shows up in your dreams with his shining smile and comfortable patter, you should probably ignore him. He is only a figment of your weak imagination. He bears as little resemblance to the real Jesus as a kitten does to a lion.