The other night my squad had “secret church” to pray for Christians around the world who are persecuted for their faith and have to meet in secret to pray, worship, and read scripture. We turned the lights, fans, and ac off, and sat in candle light. We even had a password to get in. Sadly, this is the reality for many Christians, and they face severe punishment if they are caught. We prayed for the countries where people face the worst persecution for believing in Jesus, and we listened to stories of incredible faith from believers in those countries.
These stories got me thinking once again; What is faith? Faith is defined as “complete trust in someone or something,” and as a “strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.” (Google’s Dictionary Definition). C. S. Lewis defines faith as “the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” We also often describe faith as the amount Christians trust and believe in God. Still, all of these definitions meant nothing to me until I heard stories of incredible faith. These stories showed me that faith is the insane stubbornness to praise and love Jesus in pain, hardship, torture, and tragedy.
Faith doesn’t make sense, not because it goes against scientific reason, but because it goes against human nature. It doesn’t make sense for the women in a nazi death camp to praise God and love her persecutors. It doesn’t make sense for the man imprisoned for believing in Jesus to sing praise every morning in the face of torture and cruelty. It doesn’t make sense for the women crippled with a curving spine and the most severe form of chronic pain, to still find joy in everyday life. I understand now why they say faith is blind. I would have to agree, this kind of faith is insane. Yet, through these men and women’s stories I see so much love, joy, and hope.
How can anyone cling to joy and hope in such horrible situations? This insane faith comes from intimacy or a close friendship with God. God promises to be with us wherever we go. King David wrote, “I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to Heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave (Sheol), you are there. If I ride the wings of morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night – but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.” (Psalm 139:7-12). So, we can cling to God no matter where we are, for God is always with us.
Faith is the incredible ability to hold onto intimacy with God in the worst circumstances. Faith doesn’t ignore the hard questions, it asks them over and over instead of giving up and turning away. When intimacy with God takes such incredible faith, it’s so much easier to turn away. The question of why pain exists has been around since the time of Job and before. Job is the oldest book in the bible, and it deals with the question of why bad things happen to good people. All of Job’s friends tell him his pain is his own fault, and that he lost everything because of God’s justice against him. Job is adamant that he is not in the wrong and asks God to explain himself. Job questions God and longs for death, but he insists in faith that God will answer him. In a discussion on the book of Job, Fiorello writes “Job faltered because he assumed that his intimacy with God had been breached although he did not know why.” In pain we assume God has abandoned us for no apparent reason, but “Job came to understand that God’s loving kindness is implacable and constant… Job’s concerns about broken intimacy with God were never founded in
truth, only appearance. Job had misjudged appearances as much as his friends did. Now, in a climate of heightened realization of the appreciation of Yahweh, all this changed.” (Fiorello, pg 29). From the start, the Bible tells us that just because tragedy happens that does not mean it is because God is angry or has abandoned His people. Even though Job was angry, he never gave up on his relationship with God, and therefore he showed faith. Job loved God and felt betrayed, but it was his love for God that kept him going.
Faith is certainly a key point in Christianity, but faith is built on love, and the whole point of Christianity is love. Simon Peter proclaims that he is ready to die with Jesus, but when the time comes he doesn’t have the faith to even admit to being Jesus’s disciple. Jesus does not ask about Peter’s faith, he asks “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” (John 21:16). Peter proclaims he does, and he later becomes a man of overwhelming faith. Furthermore, Paul writes that we can do many things in faith, but if we do not love we have gotten nowhere. (1st Corinthians 13:1-3). Love is so crucial to Christianity because Jesus was the ultimate example of God’s love for us. When we have intimacy with God we have love, and as our love grows we find faith. It is out of this incredible love that the women who survived the nazi death camp shakes her persacutor’s hand in forgiveness. It is out of this love that the man in jail proclaims each morning through worship that Jesus is worth it. It is out of this love that the crippled woman finds the strength to grin and laugh. These children knew the love of the Father and faithfully proclaimed their love in return. It is from this love for God that faith is formed. It takes insane love to have insane faith, luckily when Jesus died on the cross he set the way for insane love.
Note: If you would like to read more about these stories of faith, chech out The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom with Elizabeth and John Sherrill, The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken with Gregg Lewis, and Rush of Heaven by Ema McKinley with Cheryl Ricker.
