Certainty vs. Trust

The longer I live the more I realize that faith has more to do with trust than with certainty.

I grew up in the years during and immediately following World War II when, as with most American families, church was the center of our life: Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday evening, and I was active in the “Royal Ambassadors”—a wonderful kind of faith-based
Boy Scout program.

Our church (Southern Baptist) was built on the solid rock of certainty. We were certain we were saved, we were certain where we were going after death, and nothing else mattered.

We talked a lot about grace. We said “Amazing Grace” was our National Anthem and Ephesians 2:8 was our Constitution: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:  Not of works, lest any man should boast.” We memorized verse after verse (KJV, of course; the version my mom called “the real Bible!”) so we could defend our faith. And we memorized a definition of grace: “unmerited favor.”

I still believe that. All of that! [ NOTE: I am truly grateful for my Baptist background. It provided a truly trustworthy foundation for Christian faith. But I had to go elsewhere for the walls and the roof. That’s why I believe all churches need to work more closely together. Few of us are “wrong”; but most of us are “incomplete”—we see through a glass darkly (I Corinthians 13:12). No one church has all the gifts of ministry. It takes us all—working together!]

But when certainty trumps trust, there were lumps in the gravy, and I discovered them very early. I was a very inquisitive boy—I was the one that took my parents’ alarm clock apart to see how it worked. I loved my church and I loved Jesus, but I wanted to know how it worked! But in that church (at least in that congregation), an inquisitive mind was a distinct liability. I wasn’t supposed to ask questions. I was just supposed to believe.

My questions were thrown back at me as manifestations of doubt or, even worse, skepticism! I was told I wasn’t supposed to question God or the Bible. With 20/20 hindsight I’ve understood that they really were saying, “Don’t’ question what we tell you about God and the Bible.”

The truth is, I wasn’t questioning any of the above, if by questioning is meant that I doubted the truth of what I was being taught. I accepted it! I just wanted to know how it worked, and the response to my deepest questions was, “There’s just some things we’re not supposed to know!” Really? Then why did God give us brains? (I got slapped in the face for that one!)

We kept waving the Grace flag and undergirding Ephesians 2:8 with Romans 10:9: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” The contradiction—the lump in the gravy—was that when we witnessed to people it was not the Lord Jesus we led them to confess; it was our specific understanding of the Lord Jesus that we insisted they confess. And there were other understandings that were wrong, and didn’t lead to salvation. Sometimes it seemed more important that we not believe what they taught than to believe what we taught. My question was, is that really grace, if we have to do it a particular way?

And that “not of works” thing… If we have to say specific words and do specific things in specific ways… Isn’t that “works?” (Boy, I really got in trouble over that one! But nobody could answer the question.)

Our church was all about salvation. Period. When I asked, “OK. What do we do after everyone is saved?” the answer was so hazy and vague that I was left scratching my head. In retrospect, I think the answer was something like, “Don’t drink or smoke, don’t dance and don’t have premarital sex.” Beyond salvation, that was about the depth of teaching I received. There’s nothing wrong with any of that. It just ignores the preponderance of life.

But what about all those verses about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and giving the cup of cold water in Jesus’ name? I never really got a clear answer about that one, either. All that mattered was salvation—or, more accurately, all that mattered was a certainty that our understanding of salvation was right.

But we were never really certain. Had we done it right? Had we said the right words when we confessed the Lord Jesus? With all our talk about grace and certainty, our lives were plagued with guilt and fear and—uncertainty. Were we really saved? A lot of people repeated the drama of salvation over and over: “I thought I was saved, but…”

Eventually I found a faith fellowship that not only tolerated my questions, but even walked with me on the quest. More and more I’m finding peace, not in certainty that I’ve said the right magic words and jumped through the right hoops, but in the faithfulness of a community that tries to walk by faith, and not by sight. Essentially they (we) want to live as if we truly believe what we say we believe, and trust God’s grace for the outcome. If we say it and don’t live it, that’s not faith; and it’s certainly not certainty!

Early on I agonized over my decision to enter the ministry. Was God calling me to a ministry of music or to the pastoral ministry? I could have gone either way, and never really got a clear answer. To this day I sometimes wonder what might have been.

But in retrospect, I hear God’s answer more clearly every day: “I have created you with all you need to make decisions. You decide; and I will be with you.”  Of one thing I am certain: “Immanuel: God with us.”

That’s how I see it through the flawed pane of glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Pastor Jim