A fellow was on an airplane flight home one afternoon. He sat in the non-smoking section, as he always did. This day he was seated on the aisle of the plane. After the plane had taken off the man across from him took out one of those little short cigars that look like compressed leather.
He lit up & started puffing noxious black smoke into the air. The first man leaned across the aisle & said, "I'm sorry, sir, but this is the non-smoking section. You can't smoke here." The smoker just ignored him, & looked straight ahead as if no one else in the world existed.
Finally the fellow had had enough & called for the stewardess. The stewardess came down the aisle & asked, "Can I help you?" The fellow said, "Yes, this man is ignoring the non-smoking section & smoking that awful thing!" The stewardess said to the smoker, "I'm sorry, sir, but this is the non-smoking section & you can't smoke here. There are some seats in the back, if you would like. But in any case you can't smoke cigars anywhere on the plane."
The man ignored her & kept puffing on his cigar. The stewardess went to the back of the plane, exasperated. Later in the flight, the plane began to run into some turbulence. Just as the stewardess passed the cigar--smoker they hit an air pocket & she spilled her entire tray of beverages in his lap. Then reacting to her fall she leaned back & fell right in the lap of the first man. Later on, relating the incident to a friend, he said, "Don't tell me there is no God. I have proof!"
I. I WISH THAT IT WAS AS EASY AS THAT!
For instance, the hardest thing to reconcile with faith in God is the presence of evil & tragedy in our world. It is a fact that many Jews, believing in a just God, became atheists after the Holocaust. A recent article in the New York Times suggested that it is difficult, if not downright impossible to hold onto one's faith in a world of violence. The article consisted of an interview with Hugh Nissenson about his new book "The Elephant & My Jewish Problem."
Nissenson spoke about a meeting with a French Jesuit priest during the trial of Klaus Barbie. The priest told him that he believed the human condition was unchanged since Adam & Eve. The world awaited its Redeemer, & not even the murder of children shook his faith. "It cost me mine," replied Nissenson, who had covered the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem.
There was no rebuke offered to the French priests' faith or integrity, it was a simple statement that the writer could not believe in God in a world where children are murdered by madmen. "All I can say," he wrote, "is that I cannot assent." It had taken him a long time, he said, to admit to himself that he couldn't believe, "because I loved the belief." I have a hunch that there are millions like him in our world. They would like to believe...but feel that they cannot.
Another recent writer connected this with his own reflection on a Kalamazoo woman killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. "The remains of her 2-month-old-baby had not yet been found." He wrote: "2 months old. Had she been breast feeding the baby? Were the grandparents waiting at the airport in Kalamazoo when word came of the disaster? Where was the baby's father? Where was God?
But this is an old, old question, isn't it? It is not something new & unique to our age. The writer of Psalm 42 said that his enemies tormented him continually, asking, "Where now is thy God?" (Psalm 42:3). The earliest Christians must have asked the same question, as their dearest ones were thrown to the lions, died in Roman amphitheaters, or were set ablaze by Nero to light the gardens for his chariot rides.
What naivete, if not downright arrogance, to imagine that the only tragedies in Christian history occurred in our own time. Do we think that Christians who came before us did not have to deal with such questions?
Did they not have their own Lord's last words from the cross to remind them: "MY God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Just remember the words of James Russell Lowell's poem/hymn: "By the light of burning martyrs,/Christ, their bleeding feet we track/ Toiling up new Calvaries ever,/With the cross that turns not back."
The Apostles well knew all of the arguments against faith. But they believed in spite of themselves. Why? I hope to talk more about the reasons why when we get to the part of the Creed which says "I believe in Jesus Christ." Actually, I would have preferred that the creed begin with Jesus Christ & then work its way to God. That is the way in which I came to faith.
But that is not the way people thought in the time when the first Creeds were written. Once in awhile folks say to me, "I have no trouble believing in God. It is Christ I cannot believe in." My usual not--entirely--facetious reply is: "I have no trouble believing in Jesus Christ: it's God that gives me problems." I plan to say more about that paradoxical statement later in the summer.
But those first Christians knew what we often times forget: the cross was not the end of the story. "Though the cause of evil prosper./Yet `tis truth alone is strong;/Though her portion be the scaffold,/And upon the throne be wrong:/ Yet that scaffold sways the future,/And behind the dim unknown, /Standeth God within the shadow/ Keeping watch above his own!"
II. BUT THERE IS ANOTHER SIDE TO THIS MATTER OF BELIEVING.
Marilyn Monroe is supposed to have said, "I believe in everything...a little bit." That's us. Many people today remind me of the White Queen in "Alice in Wonderland." She uttered some deathless words.
I think of them nearly every time I read the sensational headlines on tabloids in supermarket checkout lanes. When Alice complained that one of the queen's tall stories was simply too tall to be believed, the queen replied: "Nonsense!
Take a big breath & you can believe anything. I frequently believe 6 impossible things before breakfast." That sounds like folks today who will believe in anything from astrology to channelling, to Satanism...etc.
Lutheran theologian George Forell says "People who claim to be atheists are usually people who don't want to tell you who their `god' is." He has a point. Theologian Paul Tillich defined "faith" as "ultimate concern," & said that our problem is not atheism (no God) but rather idolatry, (a false god). Our problem is that we give our ultimate concern to things which are not ultimate. Everyone has somebody or something in which he or she puts his or her faith. We are told that nature abhors a vacuum, & that is true of our spiritual natures as well. People want to believe, & do believe in something or other. If they do not believe in the God who created them, then they believe in the gods they create for themselves.
Contrary to what the theologians tried to tell us in the 60's, modern folks are not godless. They are rather over-run with gods. Our gods stare at us from the newspaper, jostle against us in the street, blare forth their wares from countless TV sets & movies screens.
Our modern gods are sex, success, money, power, glamor, & science. None of these is necessarily bad; it is just that none is particularly suited to be the object of our ultimate concern: that is, our God.
Even the Communists have not really stamped out religious belief. I am not talking here about the amazing fact that after decades of communism, the Christian Church is still strong in both the Soviet Union & China; but I am speaking of the fact that in a sense, Communism itself is a religion: with an O.T. written by Karl Marx, a N.T. by Lenin, & a revised version by Comrade Gorbachev.
The recent problems in China & Russia have begun to shatter many peoples' faith in communism, but it is still a faith which holds & is held by millions. Tourists who visit the tomb of Lenin in Red Square in Moscow come back to tell us that the whole thing has the hushed reverence of a religious shrine, as thousands of pilgrims file past the body of the patron saint of communism.
We are born to believe in something, & if we do not believe in the one true God, then we invent gods & religions of our own, & give our allegiance, our ultimate concern to them.
III. YOU SEE, IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, "BELIEVING" ISN'T ENOUGH.
The bystander may tell me that it is; and I may believe him. And then go home, having done nothing further. That is belief. Faith means strapping on the skates & getting out on the ice. The difference is this: you hold a belief; a faith holds you. Real believing isn't easy. It takes effort. It takes US.
Now, the Apostles' Creed was not written by the apostles, but it summarizes the apostolic faith. In the beginning, the creed was only a short sentence which, like a snowball rolling downhill, gained in size as it came rolling down the centuries, reaching its present form sometime in the 14th century or thereabouts.
In the beginning, the first creed may simply have been 3 words: "Jesus is Lord." To us that simple statement doesn't say very much. We've heard it all of our lives in church, & it sounds harmless enough. But let me tell you that when this sentence was first uttered in the first & 2nd centuries, it was spoken against the background of the pagan world's proclamations of other lords. Those who darted to confess the new creed were telling the world that a new age had dawned.
It might appear that Caesar is Lord, that Baal is Lord, that Zeus is Lord, or whoever, but Christians were those who believed that the true "Lord" appeared & His name was Jesus!
And many of them died for that faith! This is the faith that "isn't easy." It cost something to hold it back then, & I have a hunch that it costs something to really hold it today. If it doesn't cost us anything, we can only wonder whether we've really got it.
Note in the opening line of the Creed, that little word "in." In the Creed I do not say that I believe that God exists. I say simply, "I believe in God." There is a great difference here--the difference between belief as assent & belief as commitment.
We can see the difference immediately if we put it in another context.
If I say "I believe that communism exists." I am merely stating a fact, but if I say "I believe in communism." (Which I do not, by the way...) that's totally different. If I say that "I believe that John Jones is a good man," I mean simply that I have the impression that he is a good man. On the other hand, if I say, "I believe in John Jones.," I am saying that I know his character well enough that I trust him & am willing to commit myself to him.
Similarly, when I say, "I believe in God..." I am not saying that I know all about God (who does?) or even that I believe that such a being as God exists..."Someone in the great Somewhere" as a popular song put it some years ago. That sort of "believing" costs nobody anything. That sort of belief IS easy. But Christian Faith is not. Christian Faith means that I believe that I have come to know God's character in such a way that I am willing to put my trust in God.
No, true faith isn't easy. If some of us have come to a firm in God, it has only been after a stiff struggle with our doubts. I do not think that Christians ought to stick their heads in the sand & ignore their doubts. I think we all ought to bring our doubts out into the open & deal with them honestly. I believe that doubt is a prerequisite to a genuine faith. Without doubt, we would be liable to fall for any wild scheme that comes down the pike; we would be gullible & easy prey for every religious con artist around...& there are plenty of them around these days.
Faith without doubt is gullibility. God does not call us to be gullible. Harry Emerson Fosdick once preached a classic sermon on "The Importance of Doubting Your Doubts." Faith isn't easy. It is a struggle. True faith comes when you have exhausted all of your doubts, & have gotten to the place where you have doubts about your doubts. Faith isn't easy. It is a struggle.
Nikos Kazantzakis who is an author and poet, and with some religious background. I do have some questions I would like to ask him, but that's another story. There is one story he tells that illustrates his own personal religious quest.
He told of visiting a saintly monk on a secluded island. He asked the monk, Father Makarios, "Do you still wrestle with the devil?" "Not any longer, my child," replied the godly man, "I have grown old & he has grown old with me. He does not have the strength. I now wrestle with God." "With God!" exclaimed Kazantzakis with astonishment. "And you hope to win?" "No," answered the monk.. "I hope to lose."
Have you lost to God recently? Have you given in? Would you like to be a real winner? You begin by being a loser to God.
