Little Faith, Big God
The girl was too young. Everybody who heard about it agreed. They shook their heads, tsk tsked, and in the murmered conversations that take place in funeral parlors said, nearly without fail: I can’t believe it. It’s so sad. She was so young.
She was closer to twenty than to thirty. She’d only been at her job as a jr. high English teacher for a year or two. She sang on the praise team in her church. She’d met a boy who she thought would be “the one.” Life looked so good. She was just getting started.
But cancer changed all that. The diagnosis came mid-September. By December she was gone. Just in time for Christmas. She’d been so young.
Most everybody who came through the line in the funeral home kept a stunned silence. I’m sorry, they said to her sniffling parents, I just don’t know what to say. Then they offered a quick embrace, dropped their tear-blurred eyes to the floor, and shuffled on past the flowers, past the pictures, past the casket that held the body of the girl that was too young. Who could explain such a tragedy?
The young man–the one who sat next to her in church, the one who occasionally slipped his hand over hers during the long prayer, the one who had wanted to bring her home for Christmas dinner, the one whom she had thought was the one–he thought, if only for an instant, that perhaps he could explain it. Maybe it was grief. Or maybe he really believed it. But as he stood by the casket he said, I’m sorry…I’m so sorry. I should’ve had more faith. He looked up at her parents. If only we had believed more. God could have–would have–healed her. ‘The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.’ Faith the size of a mustard seed…His voice trailed off and his sobs took over.
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There is a wonderful scene at the end of C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian in which Lucy, finds the great Lion (and Christ-figure) Aslan after a long search. The scene unfolds this way:
Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.”
The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all around her. She gazed up into his large wise face.”
“Welcome, child.” He said.
“Aslan,” said Lucy, “You’re bigger.”
“This is because you are older, little one,” answered he.
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”
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Sometimes, we treat God like a balloon animal who must be inflated by the mighty wind of our faith. Little faith, little God. Big faith, big God. God’s strength and power are somehow restricted (or enhanced) by the sincerity, urgency, and depth of our faith. If God does not act as we had hoped, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
There is something that sounds almost right about that. After all, there is a strand of teaching in Scripture that suggests that our faith has an important role in mobilizing God. I’m not entirely sure of what that means. But I am fairly certain it does not mean that our faith changes how big and powerful God is. The God of Scripture will still be God–a big, sovereign, Almighty God–no matter how feeble or fumbling my faith is. He does not need me–or my faith–to do his work. It is not for his benefit that my faith needs to grow. It is for my own.
As little Lucy grow up (in her faith), the gift she receives is that she continues to discover that there is (and has always been) more to Aslan than she had previously thought. More strength, more power, more wisdom. As she grows bigger, she discovers that he has always been bigger. Her perceiving that reality with new clarity does not make the reality more or less true. But it does open up a new way for her to live. To love him more. To trust him more. And finally, to collapse with confidence into the mighty arms of the one who is bigger than she had ever dared to imagine.
As we continue to profess that we believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, may our faith continue to grow. And in the process, may we discover that he has always been bigger.
Providence on the Side of the Road
“Cynthia’s down! Cynthia’s Down!”
The cry came from my tandem partner, Barb, and it meant exactly what it sounded like. Our fellow cyclist, Cynthia, had crashed while going 20+ mph on a stretch of I-76. She lay on the side of the road with her cracked helmet, holding a throbbing wrist, complaining about a pain in her thigh that would later be identified as a fractured pelvis.
Later, after Cynthia had been carted away the ambulance and as we continued to ride somberly toward our final destination, another cyclist commented that it was amazing to see how God was, once again, at work on their tour. “It wasn’t just coincidence,” he said. “It was providence. It was a ‘God thing.’”
I’ll admit, I’ve never really liked the phrase, “God thing.” And any time people start talking about the providence of God in a messy situation, I start to get nervous. After all, if they’re going to credit God for what went right in a bad situation, are they going to give him credit for what went wrong, too? Isn’t there something wrong with that picture?
I don’t have the answers to all those questions. But as I continued to reflect on what happened–and what didn’t happen–with Cynthia’s accident, I had to admit that my riding partner was right. Some how, some way, God was at work.
First of all, there was Sarah. At the moment Cynthia went down, she was being passed by a car with two folks who were heading back to Massachusetts after a few weeks of vacationing out west. They immediately pulled over and one of them one of them (Sarah) just “happened” to be an EMT. Not bad timing, if I don’t say so myself!
And then there was what could have happened–but didn’t. Cynthia could have fallen into traffic–but she didn’t. And she could have taken out the two cyclists who were riding behind her–but she didn’t. Things could have been so much worse than a fractured pelvis and a prematurely ended bike tour. But they weren’t.
Perhaps–in a world that is broken and fractured by sin and its consequences, in a world that is far from imperfect–that’s how God’s providence works. No, he doesn’t remove all obstacles (or crash inducing litter!) from our paths. He doesn’t make us invincible. But God–in his providence*–does make it so that things aren’t as bad as they could be. And though God doesn’t give us a Teflon coating that causes all the garbage of life to slide right off , He does–in his providence–give us the grace to make it through.
*In our tradition, this has often been attributed to the function of “Common Grace” and what John Calvin (I believe) referred to as “the universal work of the Holy Spirit.
Growing into Providence
An elderly gentleman told me a story today. It must’ve happened more than eighty-five years ago, when he was a little boy. He didn’t elaborate on the details, though it was clearly etched in his mind.
It seems that a a group of children from the neighborhood went swimming at a local pond one day. One of them didn’t come home.
At the funeral, the preacher said: “This was not an accident. This was a part of God’s plan. This was God’s will.”
My old friend has never forgotten it.
I’m not sure if he believed his preacher or not. But it seems that he did. It seems that he found the words to be full of hope, full of comfort.
I’m not sure that I do.
I worry that–with all our Calvinistic talk about Divine Providence and Sovereignty and Control–we run the risk of making God the author of evil. For if God pulls the puppet strings that pull a young boy under water, what can you call it but evil? I wonder, wouldn’t we be better off if we gave the credit for these things to somebody/something else?
On the other hand–I understand the comfort in knowing/believing that things don’t simply happen at random; that there is a higher purpose; that the Good God is in control and that tragedy strikes because he has some hidden good in mind that we cannot understand.
I suspect that there is some messy middle ground between these two positions (micromanaging of the universe on the one hand and liaise faire style of governance on the other) where the truth about God’s role in all this lies. There must be some way to nuance our theological language that respects both the power of our good God as well as the reality and power of evil.
I’ll let you know when I find it.
In the meantime, I find that when trying to make sense of God’s role in the brokenness of this world and in our lives, most folks toss nuance out the window and pick one side or the other. As for me–the longer I’m in ministry, the more I’m learning to respect the folks who put their faith in a God who is in complete control. It takes a lot of faith (and chutzpa) to sit by the hospital bed of a loved one, to stand over the casket of a friend, to take a pink slip from a boss, to watch the evening news and to still say: It was God’s will. I do not understand it all. But I know God is good. God is in control. And that is enough for me.
But like I said, I’m not quite there yet. It seems to me that in so many matters of faith, I’m like a child playing dress up–I’ve got Dad’s suit, tie, and shoes on, but they’re all too big. I’ve got some growing to do before I can fit into them quite right. And while I’d like to think that I’ve grown up a bit in the past few years–while the “pants of providence” don’t pool around my ankles quite like they used to–I’ve still got some growing to do before I say with the the same simple conviction of that Dominie of years gone by: “This was not an accident. This was a part of God’s plan. This was God’s will.”
Baal, BEN FRANKLIN, and the Birds
That’s what I was going to call my sermon Sunday. But because of time limitations, I had to leave the Ben Franklin part out.
There were several reasons I wanted to include a bit about Ben Franklin. One is that I just finished reading his biography and have to do something with all that information. After all, over 500 pages, I learned some interesting bits about old Ben:
- When he did the famous kite experiment with his son William, his son was actually 21 years old (not a small boy as legend seems to suggest). Later, the two were estranged because of their differing positions on the War for Independence.
- Franklin was a fan of parlor tricks. Among his favorites was a cane he made that would dispense oil on water when he tapped the waves. Doing so would “still the waves.”
- Franklin briefly started his own sect. Among the rules: “all men shall have beards” and strict adherence to vegetarianism. The little experiment ended when Franklin caved in and ate a hamburger (or steak, or pork chop, I can’t remember which).
- Franklin started the first volunteer fire department in America.
- Franklin believed that fresh air was good for one’s health and took a daily “airbath” in front of his open window (some say in the nude).
There are many other interesting snippets about Franklin–but the simple intrigue of his life was not the primary reason I wanted to include him in my sermon. Rather, I wanted to include him because I see Franklin as something of a “Case in Point” for my discussion on “practical atheism.” Let me explain.
One of the most famous scenes in Franklin’s life (taken from his own autobiography) is his arrival in America as a “bedraggled 17-year-old runaway…straggling off the boat” with little more than a nickle to his name. Equally famous is the image of Franklin some fifty or sixty years later, simple but stately, a wealthy land owner (with three homes when he died), mover and shaker of 18th century politics etc etc. Basically, a success. According to Isaacson (Franklin’s biographer), this move made Franklin “typically American” because Franklin proved that with a little hard work and ingenuity, (unlimited) upward mobility was possible. To borrow the old cliche, Franklin proved that it was possible (and indeed, expected), for Americans to “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.”
So what’s the relation to “practical atheism“?
Well, in Franklin’s world, the goal was to live independently, not dependently. Franklin believed in some sort of benevolent, powerful being off in the sky, but when things went well in his life, Franklin was much quicker to pat himself on the back than to offer up a prayer of thanksgiving. He was much quicker to praise his own industry and frugality than to praise the Maker of Heaven and Earth. He (Franklin) deserved all the credit for his life’s successes.
Perhaps this sounds “normal” to us (particularly the “bootstraps”/industry talk)–it is, I think, a very accepted idea in our culture that with a little hardwork, we can do whatever we want. But now consider Isaacson’s parting comment on Franklin’s life and legacy. He writes: “[Franklin] embodies one side of a national dichotomy that has existed since the days when he and Jonathan Edwards [one of our Spiritual forefathers, I would say] stood as contrasting cultural figures. // On one side were those, like Edwards…who believed in an anointed elect and in salvation through God’s grace alone. They tended to have a religious fervor…and an appreciation for exalted values over earthy ones. On the other side were the Franklin’s, those who believed in salvation through good works…and who were unabashedly striving and upwardly mobile.” (476)
It’s an interesting dichotomy, I think. And perhaps one that ought to give us pause as we think about whose footsteps we follow in. Is it Edwards, dependent on God’s grace? Or Franklin, and his “self-help” upward mobility? Where does our help come from?
:There are other the obviously “religious” implications that manifest themselves when this worldview is expanded beyond economics and into one’s beliefs the relation between God and his world. For example, there was Franklin’s well known effort to perfect himself by following a rigorous self-improvement regimen (complete with ledger book in which he recorded his progress on 13 virtues).
