Faith is such a big subject that I could not turn away just yet. 

Many people think that there is a break between the Old Testament and the New Testament in how God deals with mankind, but this is simply not true.  God dealt with the Jews on a faith basis just as He dealt and continues to deal with Gentiles on a faith basis.  The Book of Hebrews explains this to us.

Chapter 11 - Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. For by it our ancestors were approved.  By faith we know that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen has been made from things that are not visable."

The writer then lists a number of Old Testament "heros" with whom we should be familiar.  One is Rahab.  There are only two women listed in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew -- Ruth and Rahab. What is significant about this is that both are foreigners.  To those of us who think the gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone, that means a lot. What's more, Rahab is identified as a prostitute who lived in Jericho in both the Book of Hebrews and in Joshua 2.  She was not one of the "good" people.  Those of you who have read my previous posts know that I don't believe anyone is sinless.  Rahab proves my point that you don't have to be sinless to be beloved of God.

The people listed in the Biblical roll call of faith are often thought of as performing great works, such as Moses parting the Red Sea (actually, Moses didn't part the Red Sea, God did; Moses just got credit by Cecil B DeMille).  Yet, the writer of Hebrews is very clear that these people were justified by faith, not works.  Read Hebrews 11 and you see that he stressed "by faith, they did this or that mighty thing."  There is never a sentence that reads "their works accounted them as righteous."  It was always the other way around.  (Don't worry, I'll discuss James' excellent work sometime in the future).

Rahab told the Israelite spies in Joshua 2 that her people were well-aware of the Israelites and, as a nation, they were terrified.  "I know the Lord has given you this land," she told them.  "We know about the parting of the Red Sea and the total destruction of the Amorite kings.  My countrymen are scared witless."  She then asked them to be grant her and her family kindness as she was about the grant the same to the spies.  They agreed and she gave them the means to escape.

How did Rahab know the spies were for real? She saw evidence of what this band of sheep herders could do.  She wasn't stupid enough to believe that military might had parted the Red Sea. She had just enough evidence to open herself to the possibility that the One True God of Israel was the One True God of Everywhere Else.  She trusted the spies to show her that their God was the right one to trust. She accepted as a given that Jericho was going to fall and that if you weren't on the side of the Israelites when the walls started to tremble, you were too late in deciding your team.  She took a leap of faith, not into total darkness, but not into complete certainty either.  Faith always requires that little bit of doubt. Otherwise, it wouldn't be faith.

Check out Hebrews 11 and look up the folks listed there. Their lives were testaments to faith. Their faith informed their activities, not the other way around.  And, in every case, they acted upon the evidence of God's existence without overwhelming proof.

God rarely provides us with definitive proof of His reality.  Adam had that proof. God walked with him in the garden.  Yet, that was not enough for Adam to decide that his relationship with God was more important to him than his relationship with Eve or the satisfaction of his own curiosity and ego.  Adam wanted to be "like God, knowing good and evil" and so he threw his relationship with God into the dustbin of history.

If you seek definitive proof of God's existence before you'll accept His salvation, then it is unlikely you will ever accept His salvation. God asks us to trust Him. He gives us enough evidence to believe that He might exist, that He might be able to change our lives for the better. He doesn't give us overwhelming proof. He gives us, as Paul wrote, a stumblingblock of reason so that we must trust Him.  Once we've trusted, He will show us the proof for the wisdom of our trust.

This is the way God has always dealt with mankind, since He accepted Abel's sacrifice and rejected Cain's.  It's all about faith.  And, from faith springs so much more!

Summer in Alaska means adventure. Sometimes those adventures get a little terrifying. This summer we were hiking in-country to a friend's cabin when we came to a stream-crossing where a bridge he'd built awaited us.  One look at the bridge (three ropes stretched across a fast-moving, icy-cold stream) and we saw our hope of making it to the other side evaporating.  Basically, the construction of this "bridge" requires that you walk along a lower rope while holding onto the two higher ropes which are cross-braced at intervals to keep the whole structure swaying in the same direction.  Moreover, we could not see where the ropes connected to the other side because the trees on the bank were unstable, so our friend had made the connection way back in the woods on the other side of the stream.  Yeah, I was ready to leap right on with my kids behind me!  Not!!! And my spouse, who has issues with heights, was even less enthusiastic.

First, our friend explained what the "bridge" was made of, how long it had been there, and how many crossings he'd successfully accomplished.  Then he crossed the bridge himself to show us that it was safe.  We had hoped to make his cabin before the evening cooled off and the mosquitos sucked us dry, but the bridge was a major point of decision.  We believed our friend, but we didn't trust the "bridge."  Finally, our 13-year-old daughter announced she was not being consumed by mosquitos while her parents debated the safety of a bridge in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness (yeah, she understands irony).  She crossed the bridge, trusting the seemingly flimsy ropes under her slender frame.  Her seven-year-old brother wanted to follow immediately (pointing out that "bears are going to find us") but his father insisted he cross tied off to him, which meant I was the last to put my faith to the test.  Since it had held up the combined weight of my husband and my son, I trusted the "bridge" a bit more.  We made it to the cabin and had a wonderful weekend.

I use this story to explain faith.  What is faith?  Another church word that sadly is misunderstood by even some Christians.  People outside of the church often relate it to a belief in the Tooth Fairy, magical thinking, or mental illness, but they lack experience with faith and thus are ignorant.  A good friend of mine once tried to tell me the northern lights didn't make noise because scientists claim they don't.  He was disabused of this ignorance by hearing the aurora buzzing one night. I had known my friend and those most trusted scientists were wrong because I heard the aurora "sing" for the first time when I was five.  Just because you have not personally experienced something and some "expert" believes it doesn't exist, does not mean it is unreal; ignorance is not proof of anything but lack of experience.

So, faith is not merely hope of something.  We could hope all we wanted to get across the stream, but without the bridge we were stuck in the woods with the bears and mosquitos.  Faith is not merely belief.  We believed the bridge would hold us based upon our friend's testimony and demonstration.  We demonstrated faith when we trusted our weight on the ropes, and not one jot before.  Faith is not believing without questioning or doubts.  I for one remained amazed the bridge had held even after I touched solid ground on the other side. 

No, faith is having enough evidence to know that something might be true and then trusting just enough to allow it to prove its reality.  A faith decision is never made in the midst of overwhelming evidence, but it is never rewarded by a lack of further evidence.

When I got to the other side of the stream, I could examine the attachment myself to assure the bridge really could hold me up, but I couldn't do that before I crossed the bridge.  There was no way to prove the bridge's safety without first trusting the bridge.  There is no way to prove God's existence to yourself without first trusting that He will prove His existence to you.

He gives us lots of evidence of His existence. I live in Alaska, where I think the closeness to nature gives us ample evidence for some sort of Designer.  Nature is truly complex and truly orderly, yet it lacks the capacity to create either on its own. When you live close to it, you see that nature is at the mercy of chaos, yet come to see the evidence of complex order all around you.  Human beings are negative beings at their core. You see that if you work with street people or the mentally ill.  Yet, these people can be positively transformed by a relationship with God that goes beyond anything a cleaned-up life or medication can do (again, you'll have to trust my experience on this).  If you're honest with yourself, you also see the same negativity within the "good" people even as they might mask their negativity in social conventions. Yet, God can change that negativity if we let Him.  God shows us evidence of His existence that we can accept or reject just as freely as Adam and Eve could obey or disobey (see previous post). When we accept that evidence and trust it just enough to consider Christ's ability to free us from the consequences of our disobedience to God, we will find the "proof" of the validity of our faith through the change within our own hearts.

The bridge is safe, but you have to trust it to hold you up so you can get to the other side to prove it.  God exists and He gave you a means to be close to Him as Adam and Eve were created to be and rejected. You have to step out in faith and believe He exists in order to prove to yourself that He does.  Faith is evidence for what you cannot see, but what you cannot see is the true reality of the universe.

Stay tuned for an exploration of where faith in God leads us.

Church words cause all sort of difficulties in trying to communicate spiritual truths. This is complicated further by some folks' belief that you can make words mean anything you want.

For my own purposes, I try to apply Biblical definitions to words used in the Bible. It doesn't really matter to me what Tom Cruise (for example) might think a Biblical word means today to him; I'm much more interested in what Peter and Paul meant when they used the word in the first place.

Thus, we come to perhaps the most hated and misunderstood church word.  Sin.  Want to see someone who isn't a Christian get their back up, call them a sinner.  "I am not a sinner!" they protest. "I am a good person. I don't cheat on my taxes. I've been faithful to the same woman for two years and I pay my childs-support. How dare you insinuate that I'm evil!"

Well, actually, I and the word didn't.  A person can be a very good citizen and still be a sinner, because sin has nothing to do with being bad.  Sin has only one narrowly defined meaining in the Bible -- disobeying God. 

First, understand that the Bible is God's letter to humankind and, as such, the words used there carry His meanings, not ours.  God defines what sin is, not Cotton Mather or Shirley McLain.  God is the arbitrator and definer of the universe He created.

God created two beings with free wills -- the angels and Man.  In both cases, the created used its free will to spit in its Creator's face and for very much the same reason.  The angels (specifically Lucifer, but he clearly had company) wanted to be equal to God, so they rebelled. They were created to be a little less than Man, yet they sought to be equal to God and to receive worship equal to God's worship.  In this, they disobeyed their Creator and "sinned".  Some of them were cast from heaven for their disobedience. Those that chose to remain obedient continue to serve God in their intended purpose.

Adam and Eve offer the first and best example of sin in humankind.  Turn to Genesis 1 and 2.  God said they were "good" when He created them.  He obviously created them to have fellowship with Him. He entered their plane of existence to have communion with them.  He provided them with every good thing in the garden. They had no stated constraints on their behavior other than the blessing to "be fruitful and multiply."  They were given only one rule -- don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  In a perfect, abundant world, they had only one temptation.

Whenever I've discussed this subject with people who are not Christians, someone always argued that God caused Adam and Eve to break His rule by putting the tree there in the first place. I disagree.  God wanted humankind to be His friends, not His puppets, so He gave them a choice. They could choose to obey or disobey. That choice is what made Adam and Eve free.  Without a choice, they would have been nothing more than automatons.

By description, Adam and Eve wanted for nothing in the garden.  They could have lived there forever if they'd been willing to follow the one rule. Alas, they chose not to.  Whether actually ingesting the fruit changed them or if the act of picking the fruit (thus disobeying God) did the trick is immaterial to me. They disobeyed God and removed themselves from the closeness of their relationship.  They were no longer "good."  They felt guilt and shame and were aware of good and evil. They could not face God.  Rather than leave them in this state, God granted them the ability to die, but He also made life hard on them so that they would always remember what they gave up to cease their autonomy.  It is that very difficulty of life that draws us seeking God, so even the curse of the earth for their sakes ultimately is a useful thing for us.

Adam and Eve were the first sinners and note that what they did wasn't all that bad by human standards.  They ate some fruit they weren't supposed to eat.  We think, big deal! Yet, we view it from our depraved human minds, not from the perspective of the Creator of the Universe.  Use a day-to-day example of a teenager caught lying to his parents about something important. To a lot of people, that's no big deal, but if you've ever been the parent, you know it cuts to your heart.  God had given them everything and they couldn't even obey Him in this one small area.

Understand, it was not the eating of the fruit that marked them, but the disobedience of the rule.  Human beings like to grade "sin" according to our own measuring stick, but it is a term defined by God.  Sin is disobeying Him.  As such, none of us is "good."  We might excel at following Christ's example in our lives, but we are never "good" in the way in which God made Adam and Eve.  We are born flawed and most people don't make it past their third birthday without disobeying God.  Ever see a two-year-old stomp that little foot and say "No!" in defiance of a rule they don't even know exists -- "Obey your parents"?  They are guilty from early on.  God doesn't hold it against them until they reach the capacity to understand what they've done, but they are already judged guilty.  "All have sinned and fallen short of God's perfect plan" (Romans 3:23)  It doesn't matter who we are, we have disobeyed God.

Note, I said "we."  The only difference between a Christian (this writer included) and a non-Christian is that the Christian has accepted Jesus' sacrifice on the cross as a pardon for his/her sin.  The world can be divided into Christian sinners and non-Christian sinners.  None of us have any reason to boast.  Christians are subject to the same temptations as the rest of the world.  We are not special and we are not super-heroes.  We are flesh-and-blood mistake-prone human beings who have absolutely nothing to boast about.

So what makes the difference?  Stay tuned for the discussion.