HOW TO TRUST WHEN YOU CAN’T VERIFY
Ronald Reagan famously coined the phrase that you should trust and verify. Whether he was right in the world of international relations, it is a far different reality when it comes to the faith journey. The core of our faith journey is based on our relationship with God and neighbor.
Begin with the neighbor. When you think about it, there are few things that can destroy our relationship with another human being more than the constant attempt to verify our relationship. Whether it is a spouse or a friend, consider the impact of continually checking up on them. “Where are you going dear? Who are you talking to on the phone? How much did you spend on that purchase?”
When it comes to God, trying to verify your relationship with God quickly becomes a form of idolatry. God becomes an object which we observe and a force we seek to control.
LETTING GOD BE GOD
When you think about the biblical characters of our faith, each one of them had to learn that God was free of human attempts to control. From Abraham and Sarah to Jesus as he walked towards the cross, the visible markers that humans might use to verify God’s faithfulness were not available. The elderly Abram and Sarai were childless and had to begin their journey trusting God. Death seemed the final marker of defeat for Jesus, and the cross seemed to be a sign of failure. God refuses to fit into our small boxes of what is possible. To trust God is to step our into the future and take the risk that God will be there, even in ways that seem impossible from the human perspective.
OVERCOMING CYNICISM IN THE CHURCH
The Israelites made use of memory to build up their courage to face the future. They told the stories of where in retrospect they could see that God had indeed been faithful and repeatedly saved Israel even from their own faithlessness. Abraham and Sarah had a child, Moses led them out of slavery, David’s adultery did not destroy the kingdom, judges and prophets arose at critical times to save them from themselves.
A remarkable feature in the biblical story, including the disciples and stories of the early church is the refusal to whitewash the lives of our spiritual leaders. Unlike our society that tends to deny and hide their failures, the Bible emphasizes the power of confession and forgiveness. Peter’s denial and Saul/Paul’s violent attack on the church were transformed by God into a saving reality.
BEGIN WITH CONFESSION
Trusting God begins with confessing our own inability to save ourselves both as individuals and as a community. It would be a healthy exercise for a church community, both as a denomination and as congregations, to identify some of their past failures and explore together how God has continued to bear witness to a saving truth through the church.
In a future blog, I will share a game I developed that allowed a congregation to reflect on how that same faithfulness of God has played out in the history of denominations in our society.
