in my own words

Thus titled because none of this really started in my own head.

But I've got a thought here that I'm going to try to tap into. That's a worthy use of a blog, right? Thought-tapping?

Faith is one of those words we throw around in church a lot, but I think if you really start to think about it, it becomes a much bigger concept than we usually mean. According to the dictionary faith is "confidence or trust in a person or thing," so what does it really take to trust God? One thing that comes to mind is how trust depends so much on follow-through. So why is it that faith is such a big problem, why it's so hard sometimes? It must be that either God doesn't follow through, or we have all the wrong expectations.

One option is to limit our expectations, and I think Christians of every shape size and color do this with God all the time. Sticking with what is really close to home and familiar, what we've seen him do and can attribute to him with no faith required (God has given me a happy family and nice job, therefore he is good). To me that kind of faith screams "I need something to beleive in, and God happens to be it." It's like Danny was saying in Sunday School the other day, you could attribute that to a lucky hat just as much as to God, and your faith would be just as strong.

Is it enough, though? We want God to be more. I think we need him to be more to have real faith in him. Some of his promises are pretty out there, I've noticed. Is God not following through? Is being a Christian less than it's cracked up to be?

Everyone would say no. Everyone would say it's perfect and it's amazing and it's everything you'll ever need, and everyone who beleives in this seems to be dedicating a lifetime to proving that. I don't know why we should have to prove it. It's like we're not honest enough to look at our own religion and admit that it's ever hard or unsatisfying or irrational. Defending our lucky hat with vengence just so that we can keep beleiving in it, because we need it.

But I'm thinking real faith goes outside of that, it's radical and it can't be defended and it isn't easy, but it's huuuuuge. Mostly I think it's dangerous. Like climbing way out on a limb with God and trusting he's going to catch you based on very little, for a reward we can't see until after death and with consequences that are painful in the mean time. Technically Christians are some of the craziest people out there. The longer I think about religion and God the more I say, "I don't know," and the less that bothers me. My faith seems to get stronger with each thing I un-figure out, somehow. It's like... it's like... like nothing I can describe.

I think that's the thing, faith is hard because it's blind, not because the truth isn't enough. Our expectations of God are always off because we have no idea what's going on or what should be going on, we have to be hands off about it and that's scary.

But once we have faith like that, I'm guessing, we're not going to have any case to be disapointed in God. Until we start trusting him against all odds and without any reason, how can we get any sense of just how perfect his way of doing things really is? We have to stop looking for him to be this way or that way to fufill our needs before he can start being his own PERFECT self and fufilling our needs in his own perfect way.

We just have no idea.