Faith as a tool

Let’s explore this idea of the Bible as a means of education in a slightly different light, that being of faith.  Faith can be used to empower or equip others.  It can give a person’s life meaning and purpose.  Faith can instill love and teach us how to live.  Faith, when pursued correctly and wholeheartedly often leads to humility.  Humility is not thinking less of yourself but rather think of yourself less.

At the same time, I would be remiss to not acknowledge that faith can very often lead to war.  In one people’s faith system it urges its followers to convert others at the sword.  Extreme Muslims use the Koran to defend this type of thinking.  Try this one on for size though.  We do understand that Muslims see Americans as extreme Christians when we shock and awe their people, right?  That has to be plainly apparent to us if we’re honest with ourselves.

Faith can also instill fear.  People beat others over the head with Bibles and tell them they’re going to hell if they don’t repent.  We preach a gospel that declares no man can earn salvation, and yet they have to accept grace.  Accept is a verb after all, right?  I mean, if we’re so sure we don’t earn it by works, then maybe we should have a better explanation of how accepting grace isn’t actually a work, right?  Perhaps accepting is a form of work after all?  I know I sound completely heretical there so I’ll just stop.

Another potential side effect of faith is arrogance.  I am often guilty of this myself.  I tend to look down on others outside the faith as if I have it all figured out or something?  You can believe in something wholeheartedly and still largely miss the point.  How many Christians support a just war theory even though that’s nowhere to be found in the New Testament and indeed wasn’t a part of the early church until the time of Augustine somewhere around the third century?  Go ahead, please point me to where Jesus says something other than that He’ll deal with it in the final judgment and that it’s not really our place to solve the world’s problems.

Faith can be used as a wonderful tool to help motivate and mobilize God’s people to do an extreme amount of good in the world.  There are some budding movements that give me great hope.  One of these is the Business as Mission movement and another one is the missional church movement.  These are beautiful expressions of the faith, as I’m sure there are beautiful expressions of others’ faith systems.  We must all admit though that there are those extremists who use faith for destruction though, right?

Faith has been used to defend slavery.  Slavery is in fact mentioned in the Bible but slavery was a very different thing in Biblical times than it is now or than it was in the early colonial days of our country.  Faith has been used to ‘put women in their place’ and continues to do so to this day.  Faith has been used to deny gay people basic human rights like the right to marry and spend time with them in the hospital when their partner is sick.

Faith has also been used to overthrow the system of slavery in America in the 1800’s and again where it exists in America today.  You realize that it still exists in our own borders, right?  Faith has also been used to empower women.  More recently it has also been used to advocate for gay rights as well as immigration reform.