Faith to Fail

I read Hebrews yesterday, slowly, to understand.

I told Dave, "It was nice. To the extent that being slapped in the face is nice..."

Hebrews is serious business.

I was considering writing about my findings in chapter 11, but wasn't finally compelled to do so until I flicked on the TV and the moral of Joan of Arcadia was identical to the moral of the proposed post. So now I'm writing.

Hebrews 11 is sometimes called the "Hall of Fame of Faith". It's all these stories about people doing awesome things by faith. Things like Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. Things like Noah building an ark. Like Abraham up-and-leaving his home to become the father of the nation of Israel. Like Rahab the prostitute hiding Israeli spies in her house. Like Moses parting the Red Sea. Like Enoch being sucked up into Heaven by God Himself without ever dying.

Things that have equal potential to inspire zeal or indignance.

It's kind of a long, sprawling chapter that makes the reader think, "yeah, yeah....I've got the idea...move along already..." until about the 35th verse of the carrying-on, which goes like this:

"Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised."

WHAT?!

Basically, I'm to understand a secondary dimension of faith.

There are all the stories of cool people making cool decisions and God comes through in a cool way, and even that's a stretch for us in our cooly modern world. Those situations are our faith-builders: when we go to the trouble of praying about something, or (heaven help us!) make a sacrifice for God, and we see Him come through for us, it assures us that our inner struggle was all worth something, and that God is real after all and we ought to carry on translating inner strife to such noble and glorifying decisions.

We come to understand growing in faith as that relieved, vaguely comatose feeling of satisfaction we get when we pray desperately for House M.D. to be showing somewhere on the TV, and, discover, to our delight that it's showing on both FOX and USA.

Hebrews 11 (at least the part that most focus on) is in the form of "_____ had faith about ____, so God came through for them in _________ way."

The second half of Hebrews 11 isn't like that.

I mean, scroll up and look for yourself.

That guy was publicly abused.

That guy was flogged.

That guy was put in prison.

Somebody else was beaten half to death by rocks.

Another guy got sawed in half.

Yet another "hero of the faith" was penniless and lived in a hole in the ground.

THE END.

Hebrews admits that all these people were striving after God and seeking the culmination of His will and plan for their lives. But they never saw it. It didn't happen. They died in horrific, awful ways, their faith in God's salvation seemingly irrelevant and fruitless.

Now, to everyon's credit, Hebrews 11 DOES finish by saying "God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect". These people were seeking after Christ's return, at which time He will sweep us away and our salvation will be made chronologically complete. They and we are in a similar time. We are waiting for the full number of the Gentiles to come into the family so that Christ can return and have His final judgment on evil and welcome the penitent, in person, into His eternal family. We, like them, are guaranteed little more than Jesus's eventual return, and we may find times in our lives when our acts and additudes of faith translate more like exercises in futility and failure.

These people, however, are listed for their faith DESPITE the appearance of complete and utter failure. They had the faith to see God and His promises clearly through what looks like failure (seriously-- being sawed in half), and remain unshaken. This kind of faith, frankly, puts me to shame. I don't have it.

I've been growing in faith this summer. But I've experienced a lot of perceived failure, and, every single time, it shakes me to the core, like I'm metaphorically sticking my neck out only to find a giant axe being swung at it. But I'm leading a Bible study group on Acts and reading about some epically awesome things that God does for His people, but also about some epically nasty things that God's people have gone through. I want to grow into a faith like theirs. Not just the faith that raises the dead, heals diseases, and speaks words of knowledge and prophesy through the power of Jesus' name, but the faith that gets knocked flat on its face and stands back up with a smile on its face to meet the next blow without ever shifting its focus from eternal things.

I don't know. It's kind of shocking.

Dave is in an airplane on his way into Shanghai today. I have been feeling very nervous and worried for him and for us, and how our relationship and lives will be for the next two months. It's a challenge to grow again in my faith and come to God open-handedly, saying that it's okay if everything I hold dear is taken away from me and I get sawed in half.....because I have hope for eternal things and I am only a small part of God's redemptive scheme for this temporal existence.

I'm not going to pretend it's easy, though.