How’s your faith doing?

The following is a random reflection. I challenge you to really reflect upon your life and faith as you read it. I offer no answers or earth shattering revelations. Only questions that I have been considering. I hope that you find them thought provoking or at the very least, that they let you know what has been running through my head. I preface this by saying that I am happy and doing well. In no way does the following essay represent a faith crisis or a sadness in my spirit. I feel I am growing stronger in my faith and it is partly do to the questions that are brought up by being placed in an environment very different than that which I have been in in the past. I watched a movie in the young adult group at the church called Faith like Potatoes. The language used and the fervor of the video led me to come up with the following:

Doubting faith at times is perfectly normal, but here is the thing. In order to doubt faith you have to be actively thinking about it. Actively participating in your search for faith. How many of us actually think about our faith daily? Is faith something you can put on when most convenient? When you are in a church crowd you slip it on. You use the language you would never use in daily life. You talk about Jesus and grace, but leave it at that and carefully slip the language from your tongue back into the recesses of your brain to await the next time some one else wants to slip their faith tongue on and share with you. Are you really comfortable living your life as a testament to Jesus Christ? Does that statement right there kind of make you cringe and squirm? Does it make you think about the “uber Christian” you don’t want to be. I think that we have gotten so worried about being pc, about not being the pushy uber Christian, that we have lost an important part of the expression of our faith. When did we become so jaded and cynical that talk of a possible miracle or someone devoting their life to God’s work is taboo? A topic only to be brought up in the most closed of groups, or rather only to be analyzed from a historical or intellectual point of view? When did feeling faith in God become so bad? I am not saying that we shouldn’t think about what we believe or that we should not look at the bible and our faith in an intellectual way. I am only saying that if we only do that, If we separate ourselves from our faith, compartmentalizing our church language into a small section of our being we loose a lot. I am living in a community that freely discusses and lives their faith everyday and let me tell you quite frankly it often makes me uncomfortable. Praying about problems as a first response and wholeheartedly believing it will make a difference, talking about God working in the lives of all of us, and believing that God has a plan even in the worst of things is commonplace. Again, not that this does not exist in my world in the States, but really. How many of us when faced with the unexpected death of a loved one have the automatic reaction to thank God for their life? I am talking first thing. How many of us would be able to thank God for the day we got the news that something horrible had happened to someone we loved? Is your faith a part of you? Does it define your being? Do you live every moment as a prayer? Do you find peace in discussions of God or an uncomfortable squirming as you hope to use the right language, to make sure you don’t offend, or to avoid the chance of being labeled one of “those people”(those Christians that speak so strangely as if with their whole heart). This is the challenge I am facing. How do I undo so many years of avoiding the topic of religion in public schools? How do I bring my faith back into every part of me? How do I make sure to breath it? To feel it? To live it? How do I focus when I pray on the feeling behind my words instead of the way they sound to others? Do you feel your faith as well as think it? Or are you afraid to even ask this question? Afraid of how the answer will call you to change the way you live. I know I am. The question of feeling faith scares me. What does it mean if I am not there? How do I risk separating myself from others by using language that makes so many uncomfortable? How do I balance being truthful and faithful to what God calls us to be with being approachable and identifying with those that find that language distasteful? How do I become the person I know I should be when becoming when that person may cause estrangement and loss or ridicule? Estrangement by those that have, just as I have, separated their minds into two types of Christians, the Christians of the past (miracle believing, faith feeling, Jesus living, sacrificing Christians), and the now (academic, find explanation for miracles, faith talking, convenient Christians)? How do we consolidate those two views into what our faith really is and really should be? Well, for now I will leave it at that. I am by no means trying to criticize your faith (here I go trying to temper my words and make them more acceptable again). Instead I reflect on my own concerns and questions and leave it to you to identify your faith and how/if it makes up your whole self. I leave you with the question…Do you feel your faith as well as think it?