Hiding Behind Superficiality

"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." 

Adams, The Road of Life, 110.

How can we hide behind our notion of faith so as to protect ourselves from the true God and from true engagement in the world?  I believe there are two often traveled pathways to avoiding God.  These pathways appear to be opposites, but they spring from the same place of unbelief.  Today I will address one extreme and tomorrow I will address the other.

The first pathway is that of a shallow faith.  Folks know that they are sinners in need of grace.  Through crisis or upbringing, they affirm mentally that they are not perfect and they wish to follow Jesus.  Yet, they do not really wish to know the depth of sin nor the real character of God, which reveals the depth of our sin and need.  Such folks often gather together in churches, and they pride themselves on how they do not fight over doctrine.  They claim their faith is about relationship and not doctrine.  In the process they develop their own form of shallow doctrine.

What is the problem with this perspective?

While having a relationship with Jesus is a great starting point, it is only a starting point.  Coming to know the God of the Bible is a humbling experience!  He is holy and we are not.  He deserves all the glory, and we do not.  The way of life in Christ leads us into the path of constant repentance and then outward moving faith.  

Why do we not see this lifestyle more often?

Shallow faith without a growing knowledge of God leading to repentance and deeper dependence means leaving believers as infants in the true faith.  Unfortunately in America and the West, we are often satisfied staying in this place!  Thus the accusation hits home that "American Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep."

How do we escape this reality?

I think, hope, and pray that life itself will draw people out of their shallow experience of faith!  

How?

Many of these believers have learned shallow platitudes about how to live the Christian life.  We have been told to "let go and let God" or "fake it until you make it" or "follow these four steps to a better life."  I think for many our problems in life illustrate that these platitudes don't really match our experience.  As I often wonder after listening to a sermon filled with such advice, "How do I do that?"

Because of this difference between their actual life and what they say they believe, many professing believers affirm our cultural idea that faith is merely a private matter.  This allows them to operate in the world as one of the world, but still affirm that they believe in Jesus with all their heart.  Even with this statement, the dualism between what they think and what they feel is made complete!

Others believers become good actors.  They fake their way through church, life, and with others.  Yet, they experience such struggles with anger, lust, fear, worry, and doubt.  But how do you confess these indwelling issues if you have to act like everything is great?

Eventually, folks who do not grow in their understanding of God end up lukewarm hypocrites.  While proclaiming individual and personal faith, their lives witness to an ugly reality of unbelief.  

What can be done?  How do we escape this trap?  Tomorrow I will offer some more thoughts.