"The Victory of God in man, not the man in himself..."

In a couple of my philosophy classes lately, we've been talking about what is necessary for salvation. Through works? Through faith? Through works as the product of faith? Is there a creed that clarifies all the beliefs necessary to be deemed "saved" by God? Can people of non-Christian belief come to salvation without ever knowing Christ? Does God generally make exceptions? Is there even a specific rule by which He works?

I don't think we can make many assumptions about who will or won't be in heaven. God is the only one who can see the hearts of men. But I have one friend whose heart is pretty plain to see. He gets songs like this stuck in his head and, even more, stuck in his heart: "Lord, I want to yearn for you. I want to burn with passion over you and only you." What is this but the work of God in him?

I think it's safe to say that salvation isn't about whether you have theological concepts neatly sorted in your mental library. God brings about salvation without any help from my beliefs or my deeds and certainly not from my intellectual grasp of the philosophy of religion. I'm pretty sure that it's the songs you sing to God in your heart that indicate your salvation. When I hear my friend whistling that song across campus, I remember this: "Glory be to God who allows such miraculous things to occur in the hearts of men." and this: "He who searches hearts and minds knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose."

Irony

Things are going great for me right now. Really, I'm very satisfied with my life. And I've had enough of it.

Happy times are all well and good, but I don't think I'll ever be happy being happy. I'm happiest when I'm miserable. (I'm not kidding.) In the moments when I feel the most desperate, the most disgusting, and the least desirable...in those moments I love my great God most. I realize in those times that my worthlessness has no effect on His greatness and the grime of my sin only shows that His love is stronger than anything I can imagine.

My sappy spirituality on the good days is nothing compared to my brokenhearted longing for more of His perfection. There's nothing like being silent and helpless before the Father, crying out for Him to fill you because you're empty. I love laughing and I love being satisfied with how my life is going, but "how my life is going" seems to be the opposite of how much I depend on Christ.

I suppose that only shows how much of a disgusting wretch I am. Geez. I'm just one of those people whose faith is a crutch for the hard times, huh? Oh, God, I hope not. But I'd rather be someone who needs a crutch every single day of the week. I want the passion and determination to seek with all my heart, in the hard times and the good ones. That's the challenge. God, let me never be complacent.

--edited September 5--

I realized the obvious yesterday: I can make my blessed life more difficult and I'm also supposed to do so. I think that's why Jesus taught us the disciplines, particularly those of deprivation. In addition to taming the spirit and the desires of the flesh, by giving up those things that comfort or distract or satisfy, I am left empty--and He is more than willing to fill me up.

For example, I'm a fidgeter. When nothing much is going on, I need to be doing something with my hands. Often that lands me on the computer doing something worthless...but last night I tried something different. I pulled out my prayer journal and I copied Romans 8. (I know, I know, get off it already. But I LOVE that chapter!) It was a great way to go through each verse and really meditate over it. It was also cool because I was copying the ESV version and I previously memorized the NIV version so I was able to compare the two as I wrote (I prefer the NIV, fyi.) So that's my new plan--when fidgety, copy passages into my notebook. I want to go through the rest of Romans, then Philippians, and who knows--I'm such an antsy person that maybe I'll be ranked up there with the scribes of the Medieval ages and have the whole New Testament done by May.

Faithfulness

I think I've explored some different ways of looking at what "faithfulness" means (see post about Kierkegaard from June). This little scribble looks at fides in a couple of other ways.

First: K talked about giving a hope or love or passion back to God with the expectation that we will receive it back. His perspective pertains to the faith required of finite Man to interact with an all-powerful God, having more than just a generic confidence in the Provider. I've experienced this in a small way this year; I don't suppose K would have included it as something wonderful and marvelous in Fear and Trembling, but it has been a fulfilling experience for me.

I gave up something close to my heart, like my child or my great lover or my security blanket...I gave up my PLAN. Plans are good things, of course. K wouldn't have approved of my incident as an act of faith if my sacrifice wasn't a good thing in the first place. Plans are good things because they demonstrate our desire to act, a focus on life beyond the present moment, and a conscientiousness of my purpose and usefulness on this earth. I've learned a lot about plans in the past few years -- 4-year plans, summer plans, travel plans, house plans, work plans, etc. The major thing I've grappled with is how plans change, whether we like it or not (and usually, we -- okay, I -- don't.) But when a plan is swapped out for something I don't understand, when I give up my presumptions and commit myself to taking big risks, embracing my finitude and the sometimes uncomfortable nature that God gave me as a human being...when I personally commit myself to a morality that relinquishes expectations and requirements that I've copied down from "The World's Book of Success Stories"... When I did this, I became something totally different and unexpected: I became a philosophy major.

The short explanation of why this is a leap of faith for me is that I never saw myself as the graduate school type...and now I hear from everyone that I'm headed towards a PhD. WHAT? Where do I get money for that? Am I even smart enough for that? Could I really go places as a philosophy professor? They don't make money--how do I support myself?

Those are the remaining questions. Now to part II: my Faithful God.

I heard a really great song this summer by a group out of Knoxville, TN called United Pursuit Band. They write wonderful worship songs, one of which goes like this: "You provide the fire, I'll provide the sacrifice. You provide the spirit, I will open up inside. Fill me up, God." And that's what I feel like, and that's what He did. Except that, like Elijah, I had to provide the sacrifice before He ever threw down even a tiny spark or ember from heaven. And I had to rip open my chest and hold my delicate, vulnerable heart in my hands as an offering before I could see the Spirit that He would send to me. It goes both ways, faith does. In my short-sightedness, I must give; and as I do, He gives back. And for every little sacrifice that I blindly relinquished, He faithfully gave more abundantly than I could have dreamed.

Now He keeps on giving. It's usually not what I expect from Him, but as I said about this summer, it's usually better than what I plan for myself. I don't think K could have possibly gotten the whole concept of faith right (that God gives back a specific thing that we give up to Him first) because Paul said something a bit to the contrary in Romans 8: "Now, hope that is seen is not hope. Who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it patiently." The blind do not know what good things lie in store for them, nor can they begin to imagine it. The limits about which I only complain prove to be the ways God shows his power--because He is faithful.

Fear and Trembling

Kierkegaard is pretty great. Just throwin' that out there.

I've been all into Fear and Trembling these days and it's surprisingly consistent with my own experience. One thing that's particularly striking is how Kierkegaard writes that faith is not something we can easily communicate. We cannot express it in mere words. I've definitely faced this in the last few months. Words fail. Expression is impossible. Any noise I might let loose falls short of conveying the truth and conviction of what I know in my head and my heart. I've been driven into spells of silence. Not going mute, but succumbing to the feeling? passion? thoughts? (even now words are insufficient for me to say what I mean) that are overwhelming. I can hardly describe them to myself, much less another human being.

Kierkegaard also describes faith as something beyond mere resignation of what we cannot sustain on our own. Abraham did not merely sacrifice Isaac with no expectation that God would do something great through it all. He didn't just "let go" or "give up." The difference is that he expected--he had faith--that God would follow through with His promises even though the obvious means were gone. Perhaps true faith was even the very specific expectation that, though God was taking Isaac away, He would surely give him back somehow.

The question comes, though, regarding specificity and subjectivity. When we seek God in faith, can we come to Him with great expectations that very specific desires of our heart will be fulfilled (though, perhaps in His time)? Or do we give Him a ton of slack, acknowledging that He will in some way fulfill our happiness, whether in this life or the next.

The former option requires a lot of wisdom. In fact, it seems irrational to others (perhaps why we fail to communicate it well.) These are things we desire that couldn't easily be explained away. What we ask for--expect, even--are almost miracles. And yet, we can't go wishing things completely subjectively, arbitrarily even, and say that God will bring it about because we "have faith." Perhaps we go on with this "faith" through the rest of our lives, living in perfect "confidence" that God will give us our hopes and desires. But then we die and discover that, though good things have come and more good awaits, in this specific instance we have been deluding ourselves. We lived in illusion and to God's disgrace, we dubbed it "faith."

The latter option seems to be entirely irrelevant in its vagueness. If we hope in generalities, thinking "whatever comes, God will work it out," it will no doubt become true. But there is no test in that, no determination, nothing to try a person and test their trust and dependence on the Father. As the Cheshire Cat said to Alice, it doesn't matter what road you take if you don't know where you want to go. We almost make our God too little by giving Him little expectations. Ask for big things and see what He gives you.

So I suppose it comes down to discernment. We can't be arbitrary, but neither can we be limited. Pure reason falls short, but mere feeling or intuition is absurd. Faith is the grey area where we seek Him, give all for Him, and acknowledge that when it all works out, it's because He acted on our behalf. "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express... He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all, how will He not also with him graciously give us all things?"

One of the best moments of my life came to my mind the other day.

I was standing on the roof of an apartment building in Washington, DC. I could see the Capitol building just in front of the sunset. I brought my Bible up with me and just read for a while. I opened up to one of my favorite chapters, Romans 8 and remembered something from this summer.

I was walking along the beach at night on Grand Traverse Bay. I could see the lights of the docks across the water. I had seaweed in my pants. Dad was up by a picnic table with his Bible. I was mostly alone. The waves drowned out all my words. It was excellent. I stood with waves soaking my pants up to my thighs. Sand and seaweed.

I shouted at the very top of my lungs, "WHAT THEN CAN WE SAY IN RESPONSE TO THIS?!"

I was very tempted to shout that again from the apartment building.

Righteous Stuff--check it

--Socrates, upon the pronouncement of his death sentence:

"In battle, a man often sees that he may at least escape from death by throwing down his arms and falling on his knees before the pursuer to beg for his life. And there are many other ways of avoiding death in every danger if a man is willing to say and to do anything. But my friends, I think that it is a much harder thing to escape from wickedness than from death, for wickedness is swifter than death. And now I, who am old and slow, have been overtaken by the slower pursuer..."

and later to his friend Crito:

"Could we live, having an evil and corrupted body?"
"Certainly not."
"And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be depraved, which is improved by justice and deteriorated by injustice? Do we suppose that principle, whatever it may be in man, which has to do with justice and injustice, to be inferior to the body?...Then, my friend, we must not regard what the many say of us: but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say."

And one more, from a different source:

"But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

So then, brethren, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God."