{"id":2370,"date":"2009-01-23T20:07:46","date_gmt":"2009-01-24T01:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2370"},"modified":"2009-01-23T20:07:46","modified_gmt":"2009-01-24T01:07:46","slug":"on-not-losing-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2370","title":{"rendered":"On not losing faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m still thinking <\/strong>about the Charles Schulz biography I reviewed last night. There are so many similarities between my personality and Schulz\u2019 (if you read the review, you know that\u2019s not what you\u2019d call bragging) that the story of his life was for me a vivid cautionary tale, and I\u2019m trying not to waste it.<\/p>\n

Schulz had (and I have) an emotional problem, which is a misfortune. But the condition provides a convenient excuse for shirking spiritual duty, which is a not a misfortune but a sin. (I think it\u2019s a reasonable argument that people like us can\u2019t be expected to do everything that more outgoing people do, but that\u2019s not the same thing as being excused from service altogether.) <\/p>\n

I said last night that I believe faith is an adventure. People who don\u2019t wrestle with faith (you don\u2019t hold <\/i>faith; you wrestle <\/i>with it, as every believer knows) have a hard time understanding that. In their eyes, a life of faith is a life of conformity, doing prescribed things in prescribed ways, following the list of do\u2019s and don\u2019ts. Real adventure, they believe, consists of doing whatever you want to do, as often as you want, without regard to anybody else\u2019s opinion.<\/p>\n

But the adventure of faith consists in precisely the opposite\u2014doing the things you don\u2019t<\/i> want to do. There\u2019s no real challenge in indulging your appetites\u2014you\u2019re taking the line of least resistance when you do that. It\u2019s in defying your own likes and dislikes that you really move into Unknown Territory and break Fresh Ground.<\/p>\n

Supremely shy people like Schulz and I fear encountering other people. I frequently tell myself, \u201cI\u2019m really doing right by avoiding people. I\u2019m such a jerk\u2014I do and say the wrong thing so often\u2014that the best thing I can do for God is to keep His association with me a secret.\u201d Schulz felt that because (he believed) nobody loved him<\/i>, he was under no obligation to show love to anyone else.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a major reason (in my theory) why Schulz lost his faith. He found an excuse to be disobedient to Christ\u2019s call to love his neighbor. In that way he failed to exercise his faith (why do you think we call it \u201cexercise?\u201d) and it grew flaccid and died. I tend to do the same thing. (And frankly, it\u2019s been getting worse.)<\/p>\n

I remember sitting on an upstairs porch in Cleveland, Ohio one summer night back in 1969. I was talking to a young man who had no religious faith at all, but he said something at once insightful and ignorant. \u201cThat business of the Cross,\u201d he said. \u201cThat just messes everything up. I mean, when somebody gives up their life for you, it puts this huge obligation on you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immature Christians (the kind we used to call \u201ccarnal\u201d) think of the life of faith as a sort of transaction. \u201cGod did X for me, so I have to do X for Him.\u201d They\u2019re like the hireling who \u201cruns away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.\u201d<\/i> (John 10:13) \u201cThis job doesn\u2019t pay enough for me to risk my life.\u201d But genuine faith understands that there\u2019s no balance sheet involved. Christ gave all, and we give all. It\u2019s not a long, long balance sheet with eternally running columns. The balance sheet has been thrown away entirely. When Jesus said \u201cIf anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,\u201d<\/i> (Matthew 16:24) his listeners knew what He meant. You take up a cross to go and die, very unpleasantly. It\u2019s a thing you don\u2019t want to do by its very nature. Faith is as much about doing stuff as it is about holding convictions. And that stuff is, as often as not, unpleasant. Stuff that makes us want to say, \u201cIf I try that, I\u2019ll just die<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

But those who learn to die that way also learn that dying isn\u2019t so bad.<\/p>\n

And then they\u2019re not afraid anymore.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m still thinking about the Charles Schulz biography I reviewed last night. There are so many similarities between my personality and Schulz\u2019 (if you read the review, you know that\u2019s not what you\u2019d call bragging) that the story of his life was for me a vivid cautionary tale, and I\u2019m trying not to waste it. … Continue reading On not losing faith<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}