Monday, July 30,
2018
For we live by believing and not by seeing.
2 Corinthians 5:7(NLT)
I’ve still got the dog tags
from my stint in the U.S. Army. Every
soldier wears these for identification in case you’re wounded or dead and need
to be identified. There is a line on the
tag which is for religious information; mine read no preference. After all, I was 19, and knew
everything. I was in ignorance…literally. I identified as an agnostic, one who couldn’t
be said to be an atheist, but rather chose to simply say nobody can actually
know if there is a god or not. The word’s
etymology says it all. In ancient Greek gnosis
is knowledge; if you put an “a” in front it turns into a negative (a·gnosis), and it simply designates the opposite of
knowledge. An agnostic says you’re against
knowing! How appropriate for a 19-year-old
know-it-all!
Scripture declares that our
faith (everyone has at least a seed of faith) is what will produce hope (as
opposed to despair). Faith, nurtured and
given a chance to grow, naturally moves towards He who IS hope, Jesus
Christ, crucified, buried, resurrected on the third day, ascended to the Father
in Heaven, and coming again to judge the quick and the dead.
Now, at 19, this slow
learner wasn’t ready to understand that, or admit it. It was “safer” (so I thought in my
19-year-old wisdom) to toddle off to Vietnam with agent orange,
bullets and bombs, and anti-personnel mines everywhere you walk, with any faith-belief
system placed on-hold. Because, in my chosen ignorance – agnosticism, knowledge
that you KNOW you can’t know anyway…well, the reality is, I just
didn’t want to think my parents might be right. The government had issued me a flak jacket,
helmet, and M-14 rifle; that seemed a whole lot more protection than a god I
couldn’t see. I had 19-year-old wisdom,
after all, and anyone that wise understands, it’s all up to chance, and the
strong are the ones who survive and get it done.
Fast forward a half-century.
I’m a lot older now…and just
a little wiser than that kid getting on a plane for Vietnam. What I discovered in the interim is two-fold:
1. It is only by the grace
of the God I put on-hold that I was not killed that year in my agnostic wisdom
and woke-up in hell.
2. Even if a person is
struggling with faith in God, choosing to believe what you cannot seem to prove
is smarter than just ignoring Him with a fancy-sounding name, like agnostic.
There are, after all, only
two possibilities:
1. There is no god…it’s all as Karl
Marx phrased it, that religion is the opiate of the masses,
just a pacifier to suck-on to get through life without going mad.
2. There is God…and, as Creator
and Sustainer of all life, He is personal and has a prior claim on our lives,
so we’d better get our stuff together and honor Him.
But, even putting aside the
agnostic’s chief rationale, that you really can’t know for sure that God
exists, there is a firm footing to be gained in choosing to believe anyway. That footing (believe it or not) is Karl Marx
– the opiate, (drug, if you will) of faith does indeed produce hope. And hope is a whole lot lovelier than
despair to walk around with, even if there isn’t a God.
From one who has been on
both sides of that equation – I choose hope; I choose faith in God.
And, incidentally, when I
chose to walk by faith, and not by my willful agnosticism, a wonderful thing
happened; my faith grew into hope in the faith once-delivered to the
saints. And I understood agnosticism is
just as empty-headed as it implies. You can
know
He is real, and His love will keep you with assurance that you are His, and
loved.
For You Today
By the way, did you know Karl
Marx was right at this point: without acting
on our faith, trusting in the God we can’t see – life will not make any sense, and
will lead you to despair, and the ultimate choice for the agnostic or atheist –
opting out. There is a long list[2] of
well-known people living against-faith who have done that – Ernest Hemmingway,
Robyn Williams, and Anthony Bourdain, just to name a few. In the end their disposition is not much
different than one of the most famous – Judas Iscariot.
So, here’s the advice on
struggling with faith – do what John Wesley, founder of Methodism, was advised
by Peter Boehler[3]
a wise Moravian missionary. Wesley was
struggling to have faith; Boehler said: Preach
faith until you have faith.
So, my friend, walk by faith
until your need for sight disappears!
Go to VIDEO
[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com
[3] See
Boehler on Wikipedia.com
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