Monday, July 30, 2018

Hope - Despair

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!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day. 

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com
[2] 23 Lists (celebrities who have committed suicide)
[3] See Boehler on Wikipedia.com

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