My cell group discussions lately have been not just encouraging but personally challenging. Last night one of the sisters described her experience of losing a spouse* and finding herself without her closest companion (not to mention the sole source of income for her family). In the weeks and months that followed she managed to find peace, she said, by continually looking to Christ alone in prayer and faith. My immediate inclination was to think something along these lines: "That's just too simple. There are a host of psychological coping issues that need to be addressed in such a situation." But as I thought more about it I realized that her response was a testimony of exceeding wisdom and spiritual maturity. In our "information age" too many of us have bought into the notion that complicating things is somehow the mark of intelligence. Some things are by nature complicated, of course, and the only way to understand them is to wade into their complexities. Faith in God, however, is not one of those things.
Of course this tendency is really nothing new. Well-meaning believers have been overcomplicating the truth since the first century. Legalism, for example, is essentially a complication -- a huge list of requirements meant to supplement or even replace simple faith in Christ. Paul asked rhetorically of God's gracious works of salvation and healing, "Does He do it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?" (Gal. 3:5) Idolatry is equally complication, as is materialism and other worldly pursuits. Scripture declares that there is but "one Mediator," but through the centuries the church has managed to add a host of popes, priests and pastors, consultants and counselors, etc., as indispensable means of finding the grace and presence of God.
As a student of Christian apologetics (the practice of defending the faith against critics), I once embraced a philosophy known as evidentialism. This is the idea that anything worth believing ought to be supported by evidence. I held my Christian faith to be one of those beliefs -- not merely true but also well-grounded in historical evidence. And so it is. Yet the essence of faith is to look beyond the evidence, to embrace the love of an invisible God while living in an earthly body, for example, and to envision His promises of a gloriously bright future in the face of often terribly difficult present circumstances. Even philosophers and intellectuals can learn to appreciate simplicity. Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga once remarked that
knowledge of God is not arrived at by inference or argument (for example, the famous theistic proofs of natural theology), but in a much more immediate way.... It isn't that one beholds the night sky, notes that it is grand, and concludes that there must be such a person as God; an argument like that would be ridiculously weak. It isn't that one notes some feature of the Australian outback -- that it is ancient and brooding, for example -- and draws the conclusion that God exists. It is rather that, upon the perception of the night sky or the mountain vista or the tiny flower, these beliefs just arise within us. They are occasioned by the circumstances; they are not conclusions from them.Amen. I hope and pray that I too can learn to appreciate such circumstances as gifts from God, and thereby learn to enjoy the simple pleasures of the life of faith.
* Temporarily, that is. I am confident, as is she, that the two of them will be joyfully reunited in the not-too-distant future.
