Past performance is not a guarantee of future results”
So runs the well-worn mantra that stands as a deterrent to over-confident financial investments. It’s definitely worth remembering in that context – but I have my doubts about it as a maxim for life or for faith. Our reading from Isaiah, for example, seems intent on exactly the opposite approach
“Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name;
make known among the nations what he has done,
and proclaim that his name is exalted.
5 Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things;
The praise offered to God is predicated upon previous experience of God’s actions – and it is on that basis that the prophet can say
2 Surely God is my salvation;
I will trust and not be afraid.”
He has seen and known God at work – and is confident that God can be relied on.
That’s always a helpful starting point…because a willful, capricious God is not one that is easy to relate to (perhaps that’s part of the reason why so much of the ancient world took a very long time to recognise that the God of Israel might be worth investigating…)
“Surely, God is my salvation. I will trust and will not be afraid”
That seems like a neat summary of all that we’ve said together in the Apostles Creed…though I suspect that, as with other texts that we share regularly, there’s a real risk that you might have stood, recited and knelt without really engaging at all.
Perhaps that’s OK. Faith is not really an intellectual exercise, any more than it’s a consistent emotional state. It’s of a different order altogether.
“I believe…” we say…but when I say those words, they are always and inevitably fitered through the lens of my own world-view. Language is finite and inevitably personal. It cannot but fail when it attempts to constrain the infinite God within its structures…What I mean when I say that “I believe …” will never match exactly your understanding of the same doctrine, in the same way that what you mean when you describe something as red may be very different from what I mean by the same word. We tend to assume that our experience of redness matches that of our neighbour, but there’s really nothing to support this…redness may be an objective reality in terms of the way that light refracts in a particular way…but our experience of it is something quite other.
So it is with belief in God.
There are many elements in a relationship with God which we may share,- which are, indeed, the common experience of humanity…but they will always be affected by our own experience, our own cultural context. Because we are living within the story of our relationship with God, our belief in it will be channelled through experience rather than based on objective proof. After all, faith is never a matter of proof. If it were, it would be knowledge…and much less interesting!
So, on any given Sunday, you or I may be struggling with a particular aspect of belief. You may be ready to throw in the towel altogether, disappointed that God has not chosen to intervene, to protect your loved ones or halt the violence that grips so much of humanity…But in the next row is someone else committing themselves afresh to faith with the fervour born of a real and exciting encounter with God, who, it turns out, is not out to lunch after all. It feels easier when we use the Nicene Creed, which begins “WE believe”…for then the collective faith of God’s gathered people is greater than the sum of its parts… We, the body of Christ, in all our weakness and our certainty. WE believe….
Nonetheless, there are times when aspects of the creed seem to belong more with the White Queen’s six impossible things to believe before breakfast. Time to seek help from an unlikely source, the C of E Doctrine Commission, who declared
“Our basic loyalty is to God through Christ, and not to any exact doctrinal formulation about him”.
On this basis the late Bishop David Jenkins of Durham once produced a minimalist creed which I find tremendously helpful
“God is. He is for us. Therefore there is hope.
God is. He is as he is in Jesus. Therefore it is worth it.”
But even so, I know there are days when even this seems too much…when the gift that is faith seems to have been well and truly denied and the struggle to believe is frankly overwhelming That can be the most horrible feeling, specially if your previous experience has been of a shiny and unshaken confidence in every word of the creeds. I fear I have no sure-fire solution. My experience is that faith ebbs and flows for everyone, including the greatest saints,….and in my experience the only thing to do on those days when it feels preposterous is to keep on behaving as if your faith was unshaken and unshakeable. Orthodoxy - right belief- is all very well, but orthopraxis – living your life in line with your beliefs – is even more important. So, when “I believe…” just sounds like a bad joke, my top suggestion is that you keep on keeping on. Turn your beliefs at their best into a way of life to sustain you at times when they are weakest. Continue to do your utmost to love the God who seems to have vanished behind the clouds, and to love your neighbour, who is probably all too present and un-loveable. Make space for love with heart, mind and soul again and again and again.
That’s all. Just stick with the programme. You may not get any proof positive that this is reasonable behaviour…but keep on battering on God’s door, asking for the grace to believe. When Jesus said to Thomas “blessed are those who have not seen but yet believe” he was opening a route for all sporadic doubters to pray fervently for that blessing that is faithm until in God’s good time faith becomes knowledge as we meet the God in whom we trust, and his perfect love casts out all fear.
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