The Slow Way Newsletter: The Simplification of Belief
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The Simplification of Belief
I love the mystical story in the early part of the book of Genesis, when Abraham (then called Abram) receives a vision from the Divine, who in this passage is called Yahweh, the God whose name means I am who I am. Abraham is told not to be afraid (I’m always grateful for the reminder in these stories that encountering the Divine is terrifying!), and then he’s taken outside and shown the glittering night sky: Look at the stars, Yahweh says to him. Try to count them. Your offspring will be like this. I promise. “And he believed the Lord” the story says, “ and [the Lord] reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
There are two words that stand out to me from my childhood, words that don’t exist in my world anymore, and only existed in the mouths of my grandparents. One is “yonder,” as in “way over there.” We used to joke with Meemaw about where exactly yonder was and why she hadn’t found it yet. She took our teasing in stride. But she felt yonder was a deeply useful word. Over there just doesn’t have the umph that yonder holds. Meemaw was also very set on having a bench near her and Pawpaw’s burial sites at the cemetery. (My dad is buried near them.) And the bench, of course, has the lyrics from one of her favorite hymns: “When the roll is called up yonder, we’ll be there.”
Meemaw and Pawpaw’s other word was reckon. As in, “Pawpaw, where’d you get that new shirt?” “Well, Micha, I reckon it was just a hangin’ in my closet this morning.”
Or, “I reckon the sun’s gonna shine sometime.” Or, “Welp, I reckon we’d better get a move on.”
To them, to reckon was to calculate, to estimate a reality based on the facts around them.
I haven’t talked a lot about belief around here. I’ve written and am writing about the ways that raising a child with an intellectual disability has both cut through and resurrected my faith. One thing that has shifted has been my understanding and acceptance that faith is somehow equal to belief. Growing up in a faith tradition that valued belief above all else meant that as a child who wanted to love God, I spent a lot of time ruthlessly excavating my own belief, afraid it was too weak, begging God to accept what little I could offer. Redoing prayers of commitment every time I felt afraid. But as the mom of a kid for whom abstract ideas like God or love, sin or death are — at least at this point — not the sorts of thoughts he can process, I have come to a different understanding of the definition of such a thing. If our understanding of belief is not simple enough that Ace and other people with intellectual disabilities can possess it, it’s not from Jesus. If correct belief is a hoop you must jump through to encounter God, then it can’t be the same as faith. Every human should be able to walk straight into the center of God’s embrace, or the news of Jesus can’t possibly be good.
So, I’ve been reckoning with that word, you might say. Are belief and faith the same thing? And what makes faith true? What is the work of faith that carries us into the presence of the Divine?
Belief is at the heart of the big verses of the New Testament. There’s John 3:16 of course: “...that whoever believes will not perish…” There’s John’s beautiful introduction to the life of Christ: “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Jesus talked about believing a lot. Over and over, he asked his followers if they believed he was who he said he was. When new people were brought into the fledgling Christian faith in the book of Acts, what happened? They believed, and somehow through that belief their lives recalculated, their priorities shifted, their purpose became entirely new.
As Ace’s mom, I’ve come to a conviction that the best, truest way of faith is the simplest. If it’s not an inclusive faith, if it demands jumping through belief hoops — rules of what it means to believe correctly — if my faith is not simple enough for my son to claim it as his own, I’ve missed the story. I was recently introduced to the work of E. Stanley Jones, a writer and Christian missionary to India in the early 20th century. I’m reading his book, The Christ of the Mount, published in 1931, and was immediately taken with the first page of Chapter One, in which he articulates something I’ve spent a lot of thought trying to grasp words for: Jesus, he says, is the simplification of God.
In our quest for a slower life and a slower faith, this is a kind of shiny gold gift. Let’s simplify our belief. If we want to know what God is like, can we look at Jesus: Humble, always learning, unafraid to ask questions or grow, embracing those on the margins, bringing in the rejected, including everyone (especially the folks considered immoral), feasting, practicing gentleness, elevating justice, caring for the weakest around him, and pissing off the religious of his day with his inclusive message. He asks this of his followers: Do you believe that God can be this…me? Do you believe that healing is possible? Do you believe that there’s more to being alive than the daily grind of human existence? Do you believe that God is for you?
Let’s go back to that verse about Abraham: He believed, the story says, and then Yahweh reckoned it to him as righteousness. What did he believe? He looked at the stars and said, Okay, God, if you say so I’ll hold tight to the promise.
Maybe belief has a lot more to do with the heart than it has to do with the mind. There have been countless battles in the two thousand years of the Christian faith, splits and fractures, new denominations and statements of belief signed in blood. But those beliefs, those doctrinal arguments are complicated. They’re about rules and divisions of who’s in and who’s out. I’m not interested in that. If it won’t ring true to Ace, it holds no power for me. The power is in the ancient father of a people, encountering a God who calls themself I Am, looking up at the magic of the night sky and saying, “I believe you. I believe you can do this.”
That’s faith, simplified, friend. No creeds we have to agree on. No theological arguments over contradictory verses. Correct belief is actually simple belief. The simpler the better. I Am Who I Am showing up in your dreams, grabbing your hand and leading you outside to see all that’s possible, all that your life could leave behind. Do you believe this?
It’s that kind of faith, with all its doubts and complications, that causes God to RECKON Abraham as righteous. Abraham is called good, not because he never fails, not because he holds a complicated belief system, but because he trusts that the One who shows him the stars can make his own life a miracle.
I wish that kind of belief for you as well, friend.
a slow practice
I’ve always wanted to be like Abraham: picked out of the crowd for something miraculous, given a vision and invited to something profound. I know that the stories I received as a child in the church were invitations to my imagination: If God can show up in a dream, show Abraham the stars, and make a giant promise, God can do the same thing for me!
I was (and still am) always looking for those moments, when the Divine is close by, when time stops and I’m ushered into an alternate world where all the questions and doubts and realities of suffering are settled, and the truth is revealed. I hope that’s what eternity is like. When I imagine my dad’s reality right now, that’s what I hope for: Truth so shiny and clear that all the pieces of the divine puzzle are set in place, where our lives are stitched into every other life and we see our beauty and glory for what it is. I’m believing in that, and praying that my dad is in love with the tapestry he’s part of.
I wonder if you can spend some time reflecting on your own tapestry, what you don’t yet have eyes to see, but are invited — in faith — to wonder about. Will you take some time to imagine with me?
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Close your eyes and let yourself settle for a bit into the swirly dark behind your eyelids. Take a few more deep breaths if you need to to get yourself settled.
Now I want you to imagine with me you opening your eyes. You’re on your couch in your living room, and the Spirit of God has grabbed your hand, and lifted you up out of your nap. You let yourself be led to your front door, out down the stairs of your apartment building or past your front porch, and out into your yard, or the driveway, or the sidewalk. Everything around you is empty. Even if you live in the city, imagine the lights off on the street, the sounds silenced. There is you and the hand the you hold, and the night sky. No artificial light stands in the way of you encountering the stars tonight. Imagine the brightest stars you’ve ever seen, the bright ones that always show up, but also the blur of pinpricks of light that only show themselves in the darkest, most rural nights.
You stand for a while staring up at those stars, holding the hand of the One who led you to this spot. What do you feel here in this moment? What do you want to feel?
The Spirit speaks now, and I don’t know what they say, but maybe you do? Is there a promise God wants to give you? Is there a hope? Is there a word you need to hear?
Abraham’s promise had to do with his deepest fear: that he would never have children, that he’d never leave a legacy. Actually, the Spirit of God said to him, you will leave a legacy as magnificent as this sky.
What’s your deepest fear? What does a simple faith invite you to believe?
Sit for some time imagining that sky, and listening for the promise of the Spirit.
When you’re ready to go back inside, turn to the presence of God and say something. Maybe you want to say thank you. Maybe you want to say, I believe. Maybe you want to say something like the father in Mark chapter 9 who holds both faith and doubt at the same time: I want to believe, help me overcome the part of me that doesn’t believe yet.
And just as Yahweh reckoned Abraham’s faith as righteousness, can you imagine what it might mean for God to reckon your own faith, to bless you for the little bit of faith you hold, to honor you and your willingness to look at the stars and imagine?