Disturbed by Faith

"A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last. Do you fix your eyes on such a one? Do you bring me into judgment with you? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one can. Since their days are determined, and the number of their months is known to you, and you have appointed the bounds that they cannot pass, look away from them, and desist, that they may enjoy, like laborers, their days.  Job 14: 1-6

If Job lived in our day, perhaps he would be diagnosed with clinical depression. Job thinks life would be better if God simply let him alone. I wonder how common such feelings are for people of faith. I know that some people fear such feelings and view them as a threat to faith. Job's friends who seek to "comfort" him would seem to fall in this camp. But God has nothing but criticism for these friends when God finally makes an appearance toward the end of the book.

It is surprising how many people have a Joel Osteen sort of outlook on faith. They see faith as one more consumer item to make their lives better. "God just wants you to be happy," say the Osteens, but Job would not seem to agree. Neither does Jesus, and he isn't suffering from depression.

I think one reason that faith can sometimes feel more disturbing than comforting is that it seeks to reshape us in ways that are ill suited for the world in which we live. God's ways, the ways of the kingdom, the ways Jesus teaches his disciples, are perfectly suited to a very different world. It is a place where love reigns, where forgiveness is freely offered, where revenge is never sought, where the strong and powerful act as servants, where the last are first, where divisions of race and class and nation and clan disappear. This, of course, is very different from the world where we live. All too often, it is also very different for the communities we call congregations.

However, people who go far enough in this faith walk, who are truly reshaped and transformed by it, become something remarkable. They become more and more Christ-like, more and more in tune with God's ways, and yet still able to live comfortably, even joyfully, in this world of ours. I'm not there myself, but I have witnessed it in others. I've seen people who's egos have receded, who live lives that are centered on God and display God's love, and yet they are able to love and embrace this broken world of ours without getting frustrated or angry at its un-Christ-like shape.

I wonder if such folk understand salvation in a way that I have only begun to grasp, an experience of God's love and grace so deep and full that they can love and embrace others without needing to fix or correct them first. A love that can simply love, and wait, and hope.

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