Faith

My younger daughter, knowing of my affection for reducing the Christian gospel to a pithy phrase on a church sign, sent me a text this weekend to add to my collection. Here’s what the church sign said, “I seek not for a faith that moves a mountain but faith that moves me.” She apparently has been listening to Dad over the years, and commented, “Wouldn’t we want a bigger faith than one that affects only us?”

There have been times in my life when I’ve searched the Scriptures, seeking some basis for thinking that faith was ultimately about me. Sometimes I’ve dreamed of thinking that it would be great if I could get in my car in the morning, hit the remote control for the garage door, drive to work, go straight to the office and close the door, come out and elucidate my classes from on high, go back to the office, get in the door, drive home and hit the remote control to open and close the garage door. After all, all I want is a “faith that moves me.”

But those searches have proven to be futile, selfish, overly individualistic efforts on my part to think it is somehow all about me! Thankfully, despite the fact that I can be very comfortable locked in an office doing research in uninterrupted fashion, someone along the way taught me well that from the point of view of Jesus, He comes when “two or more are gathered in His name.” (Matthew 18:20) It really isn’t so much about “Jesus and me,” but more about “Jesus and us.”

And it is the “us-factor” that should make us want faith that “moves mountains.” When Jesus looked around at the “us-factor” of His world, He saw people who could only be described as “sheep without shepherds.” (Matthew 9:35-38) If Jesus is the paradigm for how we live out the gospel, it is hard to imagine how I could ever be too focused on what’s in this for me. There are mountains to move – and they can only be moved by faith!

When I see and hear comments like this, I wonder if a part of our problem is that we wrongly assume that the power of faith is rooted in how much faith we have, rather than the object of our faith. I don’t think it can be said better than Dean Walker said it: “The power of the Christian faith lies in the person of Christ, through whom we are redeemed and endowed with new creation by the action of God in Christ.” (Adventuring for Christian Unity, page 121)That sounds like “mountain-moving faith” if ever there was such faith!

Ours is a faith focused on community, not self. Miroslav Volf says it well when he suggests “because the triune God is not a private deity, one cannot create a private fellowship with this God.” (After Our Likeness, page 33) Faith really isn’t about “moving me,” but rather about entering a relationship with a God who is in the business of moving mountains.

Our very individualistic culture is constantly tempting us to think that the gospel is all about me. Perhaps that is one of the mountains we need to start moving – by faith!