Living Before the Consuming Fire

"I am always worried by groups that want to talk about God but do not make much effort to talk to him.  I felt that they were using dogma to defend their inner uncertainty, using a system of belief to protect them from the world around them.  The real world will always challenge our human, dogmatic claims, it will disturb our fantasies and seek to put us in touch with God.  But for rigid dogma, this is unacceptable, God must approach them through the channels they have chosen or he will be unrecognized.  We all live with the danger of a selective egotism that would censor the world, the preacher, the Church, the Bible, and even God.  We make our belief, our prayers and our God act like a sedative, preventing us from full engagement with the world.  It would be better to lose a God that we could grasp and a faith that hid us from our fears, and stand before him with whom we have to do.  At some stage we need to discover our God is a consuming fire and is not tameable by us." 

David Adam, The Road of Life, 110.

I have met many people in my journey of life who have no doctrinal or theological grasp of God.  In fact, most of us when we come to faith, have little understanding or appreciation of the character of God or how to think about the world in relation to God.  The one thing that we discovered was a holy and loving God revealed in Jesus Christ.  We knew, however shallow the understanding, that we were sinners in need of a savior and Jesus was that savior.

The real shame and crime of the faith is that many stay in this place.  Many church communities and many individual Christians shun those who desire to know God better, to think clearer, and to grow deeper.  They say it is about relationship instead of knowledge.  

In some ways this is true, but how can we be in relationship with someone we do not know!  In reality, these shallow churches and individuals encourage new believers to stay infants in the faith.

The problem is life.  We learn shallow platitudes, but life is way to hard to keep these platitudes in line with our experience.  So, many give up the faith of the "church" and make faith a private matter.  

Others fake their way through church and with others.  They know they do not live what they say, but they know what they believe is true.  Eventually, they find themselves living a dual life compartmentalized between times of faith and real life.  Eventually, they find themselves lukewarm.

In reaction to the shallow life of many believers, a different breed of Christian has arisen.  This breed is one that is academically and theologically rich.  It seeks to know God.  It investigates the avenues of faith throughout church history.  It plumbs the depths of scripture.  Eventually, it finds that systems of thought have walked these paths before them.  This brings joy because it means they are not alone!  This propels them into deeper study.  For those with this personality type, in a few years they know more about God than their friends and the pastors of many churches.  This is very satisfying!

Again, the problem is life.  This time it is not the life they experience outside of themselves.  These folks have the intellectual tools to understand creation, sin, and redemption.  Many of these folks excel in their professions.  They are insightful people!  The problem is that many cannot understand why they know so much, yet they personally struggle to live out what they believe.  

They struggle to love.  They struggle to feel and know the presence of God.  In the words of Adam, they have been using "dogma to defend their inner uncertainty, using a system of belief to protect them from the world around them.  The real world will always challenge our human, dogmatic claims, it will disturb our fantasies and seek to put us in touch with God."

How do we escape the trap of being either being shallow and not growing in knowledge of God or being academic and not growing in our relationship with God?  We believe the gospel!

If life is about repentance and faith (which it is in a fallen world!), we learn to live this life.  We do not fake our need.  We nurture and grow in our knowledge of this need.  We repent of our sin and learn to cling to Jesus.  We do not tolerate shallow knowledge because we want to know the lover of our soul.  We struggle to understand scripture and theology.  This should lead us to deeper repentance and faith, which is deeper relationship.  We keep an active eye out for our growing pride, and we develop a faith that recognizes that maturity means deeper dependence worked out in repentance and faith.

Authentic faith lives a life of growing knowledge and growing relationship.  To diminish either leads to error in life and practice.

Stop hiding behind your "faith" and come to know the consuming fire that is our God.