Is Faith What God Is About?
This post is an expansion of a blog I wrote March 6, 2007. It is for the most part an expanded look into “faith.” This is not a complete overlap of the other. They complement each other.
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The preacher asked “What is God about? It was the kind of question that I pay attention to. If I can know what God is about in this world, then in the limited time I have remaining in life, I want to be about the same thing.
The question was rhetorical, so I was not surprised when the minister gave us the answer: “He is about bringing us to the point where we have at least a crumb, a beginning point of faith . . .” A little later he spoke again of faith, this time in relation to the book that stirs all kinds of imagination, the biblical book of Revelation. “Revelation,” he said, “is not about who is left behind, but about those who have faith.” He referenced Revelation 7:14-17.
So God is about getting us to the point of faith; the book of Revelation is about those who have faith. Is faith what it is all about? I remember a Bible professor who in all kinds of contexts, not just religious, was frequently heard to say, “You just have to have faith.” What was that supposed to mean?
If faith is the final word, it is meaningless. Faith without an object is dead, being alone. Faith is always “faith in.” Depending on the object of faith, we can speak of species of faith: religious faith (whether Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, or some other), political, economic, national, scientific, or secular.
Strangely, the president of the United States has spoken much about “faith-based initiatives.” Others, following a similar line of thinking speak of “faith communities.” The fact is that all initiatives are faith-based. All true common-unities share, among other things, a common faith. In my hometown, we had a highschool football coach whose teams had won more state championships than any other team in the United States. The town, the bankers, and the young football players had great faith in this phenomenal coach.
We live by faith–all of us. We live by what we believe in, what we believe about. We make our decisions and take action based on those things we are convinced of, those things–persons included–that we trust. The atheist is a believer. The atheist believes there is no god.
Faith is not a stand-alone word. Faith is not an end in itself. The Christian Bible says: “Faith without works is dead.” A favorite Christian hymn says:“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way . . ..”
Faith, and I’m not speaking just of religious faith, is mediate a medium, an intermediary, a go-between. Faith is an attitude, a stance. It is a bridge, a door, a relation, a motivator, a means, a way, an enabler.
Faith always points beyond itself, as do its synonyms: trust, confidence, commit, rely, accept, conviction, convinced, depend on.
A faith refers to an organized structure derived from the above, it has content and related constituents. In this sense it is a complex.
Faith may be merely intellectual, personal, or pragmatic, the coalescence of all three.
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Now, having given something of a wordy disquisition on the word, faith, I return to the question of what God is about, the question that got all this stirred up within me. What is God about?
The Bible says “God is love,” and Jesus, when asked what the greatest of all God’s commands was, answered, saying that everything God is about can be stated concisely. All God wants of his human creation is for them to love God and to love each other. If God is love, and if love is all he desires, it seems clear to me what God is about: God is about love.
Faith is an attitude, a chosen stance that puts its confidence, its trust in God. When a person adopts this relation to God, the way to love is opened, the person accepts God at face value, and commits their life to the practice of the divine love that faith enables them to accomplish.
Faith is the necessary intermediary between their old life and their new life of reliance on God. Faith does the work; love is the accomplishment.
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But even love is not what God is about, not ultimately. Why love, except that God commands it? Love leads to what it is all about, what in the end God is, has, and always will be about.
Love changes things, changes everything. If you’ve ever been “in love,” you know this. Love is enjoyable, when under its spell, all else is forgotten and we are at peace. We feel that our life has been enriched beyond measure.
I summed it up best in the March blog:
“What is God about? The incredible, incomprehensible, inexhaustible riches of the love, joy, and peace that faith in the triune God leads us to and graciously bestows upon us. That is what God is about.”
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Music, in it simplest form, is much like a trip from the house to the mailbox, perhaps along the way making a brief stop to pick up the newspaper, then back to the house (and, as we will see, the Christian Bible is much like a musical composition). Almost any piece of music in the Western world begins with a note or chord called the “tonic.” This sets the “tone” for the piece of music; it tells us what “key” the music is being played in. The tonic is “home.”
The major movement of music is from the tonic to a note or chord called the “dominant,” then back home to the tonic: tonic to dominant and back to tonic. But just as the trip to the mailbox and back may involve a brief stop for the newspaper or to smell the rosebush, so the trip back from the tonic to the dominant usually involves a visit to the sub-dominant.
Thus, the basic pattern of music is the movement from tonic to sub-dominant, to dominant, and back to tonic. You leave home, take a trip, and come back home. This movement away from home adds interest to life, but the arrival back home brings us back to our comfortable world.
The Christian Bible, and the Christian religion are commonly understood as a simple movement of similar sort: from Creation to Sin to New Creation, or, Generation to De-generation to Re-generation. There is nothing wrong with this simple pattern. It is the movement of the biblical story just as surely as tonic, subdominant, dominant is the movement of a piece of music.
Sometimes we take longer trips, like downtown shopping. Several stores, a few visits, fill up with gasoline, but eventually “home, sweet home.”
“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” follows the basic pattern. So does “The Star-
Spangled Banner.” But along the way, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” while maintaining the basic pattern, adds some new and interesting elements. These move us from the sweet and somnolent tones of “Twinkle, Twinkle,” to an arousing, energizing, and heart-stirring call to pride and/or action.
Anyone can sing “Twinkle, Twinkle.” It is easy. The national anthem of the United States is a much more challenging and difficult piece to sing, but it stirs us more deeply than the little lullaby.
The New Testament book of Romans follows the pattern of generation, degeneration, and regeneration, but adds enough challenging, enriching, and thought-provoking elements that few of us find it easy reading. There is somehow more involved in the basic pattern than we had realized. The basic pattern is still there, but it no longer is simple.
Music becomes much richer, more complex, challenging, provocative, disturbing, and difficult (both to play and for the ear and mind to follow) when we move from “The Star-Spangled Banner” to Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 in E Flat. This symphony is, in one sense, a movement from the tonic (E Flat), to the sub-dominant (A Flat), to the dominant (B Flat), and eventually back to the tonic (E Flat).
In Symphony No.3 in E Flat once the tonic chord sets the tone, the music quickly moves to chords that sound a different, improper sounding tone. To simplify the rest of the symphony, it changes its tonal center several times, always eventually coming back to the original tonic with its E Flat tonic and its subdominant and dominant. Much of the time, however, it sounds like it has departed completely from the original theme, perhaps having lost it, or changed its mind.
Complex music ordinarily requires several hearings before it begins to make sense, and can be seen as a unified whole. Those who take the trouble to hear it again and again find it a source of great wonder, joy, and satisfaction.
The Christian Bible is not a simple piece of literature; it is quite complex and diverse, often sounding seemingly contradictory notes and themes. Leviticus, Judges, the books of he Kings and Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and several of the Psalms, all exemplify these problematics. Of course, this only covers some of the problems.
_____________
I propose that God’s love is the tonic note of the Bible. We might say that the sub-dominant is God’s kind of love that humans can share with each other, and the dominant is the human love of God. The final movement is back to the tonic: the love of God. The entire Bible and the entirety of a faithful Christian religion are written in the key of Love, not love as is ordinarily understood, but the Holy Love demonstrated and taught by Jesus.
I base this analysis on the following biblical statements: “God is love,” “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments," “Love never fails,” “. . . faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love,” “the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”
Much of the Bible sounds as if it had little if nothing to do with love. Much seems clearly contradictory to love. Much sounds as if power, control, or harsh demands is the central theme.
The Bible is a difficult, complex book that, based on a single reading, can be as disturbing as it can be life-affirming. But those who read it repeatedly and thoughtfully, especially if once they have clearly heard the tonic, Holy Love, begin to see that it all makes sense, all fits together, and all reflects the sometimes joyous, sometimes quite demanding development of the highest, the infinite love. Everything ultimately stems from love and leads back to that home.
Read it enough and its love will become something to enjoy and will bring a satisfying peace.
The tonic is love; the subdominant is love; the dominant is love; the way back home is the way of from love to love.
_________________
I don’t pretend to have God figured out. God is disturbing and awesome mystery; God is life and hope. If you were to go to asking me questions, there would be many I could ot answer. I know most of the answers that have been given to most of the questions, but I still am unable to answer some of them.
I am confident that all flows from the divine love, that love is all that is required, and that God’s holy love, revealed in Jesus, is the standard by which we will be judged.
The major movement of music is from the tonic to a note or chord called the “dominant,” then back home to the tonic: tonic to dominant and back to tonic. But just as the trip to the mailbox and back may involve a brief stop for the newspaper or to smell the rosebush, so the trip back from the tonic to the dominant usually involves a visit to the sub-dominant.
Thus, the basic pattern of music is the movement from tonic to sub-dominant, to dominant, and back to tonic. You leave home, take a trip, and come back home. This movement away from home adds interest to life, but the arrival back home brings us back to our comfortable world.
The Christian Bible, and the Christian religion are commonly understood as a simple movement of similar sort: from Creation to Sin to New Creation, or, Generation to De-generation to Re-generation. There is nothing wrong with this simple pattern. It is the movement of the biblical story just as surely as tonic, subdominant, dominant is the movement of a piece of music.
Sometimes we take longer trips, like downtown shopping. Several stores, a few visits, fill up with gasoline, but eventually “home, sweet home.”
“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” follows the basic pattern. So does “The Star-
Spangled Banner.” But along the way, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” while maintaining the basic pattern, adds some new and interesting elements. These move us from the sweet and somnolent tones of “Twinkle, Twinkle,” to an arousing, energizing, and heart-stirring call to pride and/or action.
Anyone can sing “Twinkle, Twinkle.” It is easy. The national anthem of the United States is a much more challenging and difficult piece to sing, but it stirs us more deeply than the little lullaby.
The New Testament book of Romans follows the pattern of generation, degeneration, and regeneration, but adds enough challenging, enriching, and thought-provoking elements that few of us find it easy reading. There is somehow more involved in the basic pattern than we had realized. The basic pattern is still there, but it no longer is simple.
Music becomes much richer, more complex, challenging, provocative, disturbing, and difficult (both to play and for the ear and mind to follow) when we move from “The Star-Spangled Banner” to Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 in E Flat. This symphony is, in one sense, a movement from the tonic (E Flat), to the sub-dominant (A Flat), to the dominant (B Flat), and eventually back to the tonic (E Flat).
In Symphony No.3 in E Flat once the tonic chord sets the tone, the music quickly moves to chords that sound a different, improper sounding tone. To simplify the rest of the symphony, it changes its tonal center several times, always eventually coming back to the original tonic with its E Flat tonic and its subdominant and dominant. Much of the time, however, it sounds like it has departed completely from the original theme, perhaps having lost it, or changed its mind.
Complex music ordinarily requires several hearings before it begins to make sense, and can be seen as a unified whole. Those who take the trouble to hear it again and again find it a source of great wonder, joy, and satisfaction.
The Christian Bible is not a simple piece of literature; it is quite complex and diverse, often sounding seemingly contradictory notes and themes. Leviticus, Judges, the books of he Kings and Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and several of the Psalms, all exemplify these problematics. Of course, this only covers some of the problems.
_____________
I propose that God’s love is the tonic note of the Bible. We might say that the sub-dominant is God’s kind of love that humans can share with each other, and the dominant is the human love of God. The final movement is back to the tonic: the love of God. The entire Bible and the entirety of a faithful Christian religion are written in the key of Love, not love as is ordinarily understood, but the Holy Love demonstrated and taught by Jesus.
I base this analysis on the following biblical statements: “God is love,” “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments," “Love never fails,” “. . . faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love,” “the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”
Much of the Bible sounds as if it had little if nothing to do with love. Much seems clearly contradictory to love. Much sounds as if power, control, or harsh demands is the central theme.
The Bible is a difficult, complex book that, based on a single reading, can be as disturbing as it can be life-affirming. But those who read it repeatedly and thoughtfully, especially if once they have clearly heard the tonic, Holy Love, begin to see that it all makes sense, all fits together, and all reflects the sometimes joyous, sometimes quite demanding development of the highest, the infinite love. Everything ultimately stems from love and leads back to that home.
Read it enough and its love will become something to enjoy and will bring a satisfying peace.
The tonic is love; the subdominant is love; the dominant is love; the way back home is the way of from love to love.
_________________
I don’t pretend to have God figured out. God is disturbing and awesome mystery; God is life and hope. If you were to go to asking me questions, there would be many I could ot answer. I know most of the answers that have been given to most of the questions, but I still am unable to answer some of them.
I am confident that all flows from the divine love, that love is all that is required, and that God’s holy love, revealed in Jesus, is the standard by which we will be judged.
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