Misery and faith

"Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment."
#CSLewis

Nobody wants to be annoyed by life. So what makes us miserable? What keeps us off track from being what we want to be? Many experts believe that uncertainty keeps us anxious, fearful, and unsettled. Maybe we can have moments that we feel good, but even in those, we worry when it will end.


If uncertainty is the force that stands in our way of happiness, so that we can be the benevolent souls we desire, what produces uncertainty? Obviously, the future is uncertain in that it hasn't happened yet. This is where the science of probabilities comes in. This is mankind's attempt at making the uncertainties of the future less uncertain. If the likelihood of having cancer is 10%, then we are less worried than if it is determined to be 50%.

However, science is just a way of finding evidence that something is true. We have to trust the evidence in order to relieve any of our misery about what is true. We have grown accustomed to trusting how science can process observable evidence and produce conclusions that we rely on. Society has progressively depended on science in this way, but we still have misery and some may say, lots of it.

We have experiences that physical evidence used for truth is often flawed. Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve Bank, admitted before Congress that his conclusions about economics that led to the financial crisis in 2008 were wrong. See, in all science there are assumptions the scientists must make that they cannot prove. These assumptions are what faith is. A good working definition of faith is "conclusive evidence that we cannot observe." The fact is that all of life, regardless of how much science we have, is subject to faith. We must ultimately draw conclusions on what we cannot see, touch, hear, smell or taste. All of our thoughts and feelings depend on what we trust to be true. With regards to parents, heartthrobs and spouses, "do you really love me?" is a cry of our heart. We must trust something to be real in order to choose the best path for our actions.

The question then becomes "what is the object of our faith?" The target of our faith is what determines outcomes of our actions, not the quantity or sincerity of our faith. We can fail to trust evidence that is real and be miserable. OR we can trust something that exists. but is not real and be miserable. You see, misery is a function of the object of our faith.

Dr Loyd-Jones once spoke of the "misery of many Christians." Why would Christians have misery when they have faith in Jesus Christ. Paul says "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ is to all who believe." If faith makes us right with God, what is our problem?

I think it is because Christians have not been taught sufficiently about faith. Often we are led to think that faith is "belief". If that is so, why does Paul use "faith" and "believe" in this statement on justification? "Believe" means to trust, to let go control and act on the supposition we accept as true. Faith is not the trust, faith is the evidence that leads us to trust. But it is evidence we cannot observe. Instead of relying on faith in Jesus Christ, which is the conclusive evidence we are made righteous by the redemptive work of the Cross, we instinctively fall back on seeking other evidence we are justified. The problem is that our natural instrument for justice is social exchange, reciprocity with our circumstances. While we have head knowledge of Christian theology, we have human nature faith. We trust more in what we can or have done to be righteous that we do the conclusive evidence of Jesus.

Tim Keller defines faith as the "instrument", not the cause of our justification. The problem we have is that we are not comfortable using that instrument. Its a tool that does not "fit our hands" very well. Only with Spiritual eyes open to the evidence of the Cross can faith be operative on how we think, feel and act. We must think hard and long about faith AS EVIDENCE. We must become as comfortable with faith as we are with scientific inquiry. We must see faith as 100% probability we are OK with God, not just for a few moments, but for all of eternity. This is why Paul also tells us to rely on what is invisible and eternal, not visible and temporary.

Only then will we not have the uncertainty that produces misery, and as CS Lewis reminds us, we can forever be benevolent.

That's worth some pondering ......