Right now seeing into the future is impossible. There was a time when I could, though. Oh yes, I was very good at settling my profession, how much money I would make, whom I would marry, how many kids and dogs and vacations, and an early retirement at age 35 because that's what you do when you're so stinking rich--as I was going to be of course.
But over the last ten years seeing into the future has become a fearful thing because I've realized how impossible that is and how little control I have. Over the last ten years I have come to understand that "πιστις" is indeed better translated as "trust" rather than "faith" because simply following without any control is not something I do. That is not to say I have any control now; quite the opposite. Rather, the control comes from God and He has given me trust in that control. Over the last ten years this has been a monster of a process and I suspect the process will have to continue because I haven't 'arrived' like I might want to. See, even arriving isn't under my control.
I say ten years because tomorrow will mark exactly ten years that I have been following Jesus. Ten years ago tomorrow morning I was stealing things not knowing that in just a few hours I would be a seventeen year old on my way to jail. God was very gracious in not allowing me to go to prison for my felony robbery; I received some probation and a near heart attack and my record is now clean. I didn't begin following Jesus because jail scared me. I began following Jesus because He showed me what my heart was capable of and what He truly wanted from that heart. He took a hold of my heart and has not let go regardless of my sinful protests.
I get to begin loving the unknown of the future because a trust in what God's control means for the future has been slowly knit... no, wrought in my heart. I have no reason to not trust Him. I still find it difficult to trust but distrust is becoming painful whereas before trusting is what brought pain. Trust has started to bring me joy now. I don't simply follow because it's easy to; it's the hardest thing I've ever done. I follow because it only makes sense to follow the most capable leader possible and over the last ten years Jesus has shown me that His two-thousand year-old track record of taking people like me and molding them is unmatched.
There is fear still, but the fear is not that God will do something to bring me harm, but that I won't respond properly to what He brings me. Thankfully, He is not afraid of the future like I am and His love allows me to trust Him with it.
Comments (8)
πιστις as 'trust'... it sounds more reasonable, perhaps, but remember that trust can be broken, while faith can only be lost. Which would you prefer?
If I claim that my trust in God has been broken then I need to establish the agent guilty of breaking trust, or I need to evaluate what the terms of that trust were and whether or not they were truly broken. For example: if a man and a woman are having dinner together regularly and the man one day finds the woman eating dinner with another man, he might assume she broke his trust. But if there was never any agreement on the terms of that relationship, she has not actually broken that trust. She might be guilty of other things but breaking trust is not one of them.
I would agree with what you said regarding people; but God--by definition--is not 'people'. The Son became human but that did not make Him 'people'. Between myself and God the only one proven to break trust is me. The times I thought God broke my trust were times when I assumed that everything had to work out the way I wanted it to and when it didn't I felt wronged. But even in relationships with people we see how easily this can happen where we've assumed too much or simply felt wronged because we did not get what we wanted. If that is the case then we should expect those kinds of misunderstandings with an infinite, spiritual being whom we have all pushed away through our sin; that is to say, we have put ourselves in a position of not wanting to understand and trust and yet rail that He has not made Himself available enough for us to understand or trust. The point is well-taken in the Gospels where even those closest to Jesus ran when He was arrested. Whatever the reasons were that they had to do so, they still ran. Like them we "have all gone astray", but God stays. The same point is all throughout the Old Testament: God is continually involved and pushing the Israelites and their constant failure demonstrates that no matter how close God is, our sin will still push back. But we eagerly await the day when it will be completely powerless to do so because it is destroyed.
Whether I feel faith has been lost or trust broken, the track records remain the same. However much we rail against God for the things men do, we defer the responsibility of men doing it. I break trust. Not God.
Then I think the terms have become hopelessly muddled. A man who claims to 'trust' a woman to not have dinner with any other man without having those terms specified and agreed to by her, would be seen by others as a faithful fool. Furthermore, the man who blames himself for breaking her 'trust' when a woman dines without him would be seen by others as a pitiable fool.
If God's nature allows him to engender 'trust' without terms, then I fear we have lost the ability to meaningfully use that term.
The point of the example is that the terms were not settled between the man and the woman and he is to blame for misjudging the situation, not her. This doesn't parallel (and was not meant to) our relationship to God. It is meant to give a normal example of how easy it is to make those kinds of misjudgements with every day situations, which means it shouldn't surprise us that we can make that mistake with God. In the former case, however, the mistake is in miscommunication, but not simply so; rather, the man didn't take the responsibility to determine the terms. In our relationship to God, God has set the terms from the beginning, and we have set those terms aside for our own terms. In learning to trust God again, the idea is to understand what has been missing--namely, that God is trustworthy and the terms He has set from the beginning are the proper terms if we would only trust that this is the case.
Then I hope we can find our way happily back to semantically sound territory, but I'd like to recheck the directions.
To 'trust' someone is to infer from an agreement made, and past instances when that agreement was honored, that said agreement will continue to be honored in the future. Thus, 'trusting' is an exercise in inductive reasoning. But given this fact, any instance in which the agreement is not honored invalidates the inductive conclusion, and thus breaks the trust.
Presumably, the terms of our relationship with God have been established; he has a responsibility, and we have ours. This is what the Hebrews assumed according to the Deuteronomic history, and this is why that narrative paints the picture of secular riches following from spiritual obedience. But the book of Job raises the question of broken trust, and I don't believe it sufficiently answers that question. Neither did the Jews during the Holocaust who placed God on trial for breaking their trust.
I suppose that I have to return to my original comment: trust can be broken, but faith cannot. How is it that you speak of 'trust' as something that God cannot break, which is what I would only associate with 'faith?'
My main point is that faith is more associated with a blind kind of following not really based on much, whereas trust is more associated with having a grounding in something. You and I have talked about Job before and we had to agree to disagree because we didn't get anywhere. The trust implies some end being held up and I fail to see where there is such an end that has been promised that God has at some point failed to hold up. Try as you may, you won't find such a promise. My point is that we assume there was some kind of promise that God did not keep and thus broke trust when in fact we assumed wrongly because of our own desires. God simply does not break promises. We do. As much as circumstances may hurt, and as horrible as the things we do are there isn't some fault to find in God for not keeping His end of the bargain; the bargain was ours to keep or not keep and we chose (and still choose) to not keep it, which is undeniable.
Perhaps I could revisit the example you used before, because I'm not sure that I'm making the point I want.
Let's say that I tell you that I 'trust' Andrea completely, because she has promised to stay married to me until death. Fair enough. Beyond this initial promise, my trust is grounded in the fact that for the past five years, Andrea has stayed true to her promise, and so I am confident that she will continue to do so into the future.
But then let's say that Andrea moves out of my house. And then I'm served with divorce papers. These are evidences that the promise she made has been broken. I hope that we could both agree that in that event, my trust has been broken. If I were to continue to insist that I trusted her because moving out and divorcing me was her way of making our marriage stronger, or that I was confident that she was just testing my commitment to her and would come back to me soon, most people would think me a pitiable fool.
Now, bringing this back to God, I have to ask the question, "What promise has he made? What were his terms? What has he agreed to do?" Because this was the paradox of Job; the promise was that if Job was a good man, Yahweh would reward him with a good life. When Yahweh took away that good life, everyone around him assumed that Job had broken his side of the promise. But as readers of the story, we are made party to the uncomfortable knowledge that Job wasn't at fault, and that what happened to him was the result of a divine wager.
So, if I found myself in that story, would I continue to 'trust' God? I don't see how I could. But I would certainly have 'faith' in him, because what else are my options? At the end of the story, Yahweh displays himself in all his power and glory, an entity that can clearly do whatever it likes without complaint from someone as low as myself. In the face of that kind of deity, my only options are faith or despair; most people would choose the former.
You were saying what you wanted to say clearly enough; I'm answering exactly what you want to know, just not in the way you want to know it. I would not know what it is for Andrea to be faithful to you. You can give me examples and guidelines and tell me she follows them, but I would not know what that means. Likewise, there is no way you could know what God being faithful means because you don't follow God. The promises we have are that God will always be God; that He will always act in accordance with His character and that those who follow Him will receive from Him what is best on His terms, which obviously does not always mean everything will go smoothly or sweetly or softly or gently. The idea behind being in relationship with God since The Fall is that we are being conformed to that image we were meant to reflect all along, but since we invited a fallen world into the picture, that process is painful but the end result is worth it. Job understands this in a very real way. You only understand it in a transactional sense, which is why you don't get Job. The point of Job is Job getting it, which makes Him know God on a greater level than he would have, which prepares him in a unique way to serve in God's future kingdom as well as God's present kingdom.
This isn't some special logic or gnosis but a true knowing that is very much grounded in what is really happening, like knowing what it feels like to be cut with a knife as opposed to seeing someone else get cut or simply reading about it. I trust God because the promise I have is that if I work out my salvation then God will help me look more and more like Jesus and less and less like the sinner I was. The original post was about that process and how I've come to understand it, which is why I am able to embrace the fear of the unknown future. This isn't an argument for Zach to get that will hopefully convince him; it is a demonstration of God actually really working in my life. Does Zach need Jesus to be a better student? Maybe, maybe not. Does John? Yes. Does knowing Jesus make John a better student/husband/worker? Yes. Would Jesus be a good student/husband/worker? Yes.
Job is not giving in because God beats His chest and grunts. Job has already this whole time understood that God's ways are beyond his own, and he doesn't accept the other answers he receives about his plight. God's answer is the very same answer Job gave and is why Job never cursed God like his wife told him to. Job knew that God was wiser and had His own reasons, which is the answer God gives Job, which is why Job is satisfied. Pretending Job's answer doesn't come until the end ignores Job's own trust in God; his answer is verified by God Himself, which is what comforts Job.
Robert Price rails against the prosperity Gospel that Osteen espouses and says that it is unbiblical. While you're not advocating a prosperity Gospel, you are still looking for some kind of economy. The ideas of prospering and being blessed and receiving favor have a built-in idea of being what God sees as best for each person, not necessarily what each person sees as best for themselves. I'm not trying to be insulting but you simply aren't going to understand this unless you are following Jesus. I know your worldview precludes this kind of participation or even recognition of this being a real thing and that's fine, but trying to talk me out of what God is doing in my life will never, ever work no matter how little sense it makes to you.