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A
Foreign.
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B
This is the Behemoth Podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co host Brent Billings. Today we are with Reed Dent to talk about the virtue of faith.
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Bad Theology A quiz by Scott Cairns with an epigram here. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid. Whenever we aver the God is nigh, do we imply that he is ever otherwise? When in Scripture God's anger is said to be aroused, just how do you take that? If, whether now or in the fullness, we stipulate that God is all in all just where or how would you position hell? Which is better? To break the law and soothe the wounded neighbor, or to keep the law and cause the neighbour pain? Do you mean it? If another sins, what is that to you? When the sinful suffer publicly, do you find secret comfort in their grief? Or will you also weep? They are surely grieving. Are you weeping now? Assuming sin is sin, whose do you condemn? Who is judge? Who will feed the lambs, the sheep? Who the goats? Who will sell and give? Who will be denied? Whose image haunts the mirror? And why are you still here? What exactly do you hope to become? When will you begin? And now for our daily beekner on faith. Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession. It is on again, off again, rather than once and for all. Faith is not being sure where you're going, but going anyway. A journey without maps. Paul Tillich said that doubt isn't the opposite of faith, it's an element of faith. Almost nothing that makes any real difference can be proved. I can prove the law of gravity by dropping a shoe out the window. I can prove that the world is round, if I'm clever at that sort of thing. That the radio works, that light travels faster than sound. I cannot prove that. That life is better than death or love better than hate. I cannot prove the greatness of the great or the beauty of the beautiful. I cannot even prove my own free will. Maybe my most heroic act, my truest love, my deepest thought, are all just subtler versions of what happens when the doctor taps my knee with his little rubber hammer and my foot jumps. Faith can't prove a damned thing or a blessed thing either.
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C
I'm now realizing why I always ruin your cold open.
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A
Why is that?
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C
Because this feels like what you do whenever I show up at ccf. Which is like read deep things out of nowhere.
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A
Yeah.
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C
And I haven't had a chance to warm up yet. And I'm like, whoa.
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A
Yeah. Because then what happens? What do you. What are you feeling right now?
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C
I don't know. And that's the problem. I'm not in control.
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A
You're like, why did he read this thing? And what does it mean?
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C
Yeah, tell us. Tell us, Reed.
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A
Well, we're here to just have a little conversation about the virtue of faith, which I've spent a long time going back and forth, like, how is faith a virtue? Is it a virtue? And this is one of those where I think the standard way of the Bama way of thinking about faith maybe more diverges from faith as a virtue, like the traditional virtue, or just, you know, we have differing kind of approaches to, like, what faith is. I think that's actually kind of a lot of what's at the core of the Bama project. I mean, I was thinking about, you know, each of the virtues kind of have a Bama ism wrapped up in them somewhere. And I think, you know, maybe for a lot of people, the most fundamental of the Bama isms is trust the story.
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C
Yep.
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A
I think it's even on T shirts and stuff, right?
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C
Well, it's. It has shown up on T shirts. Yes.
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A
Yeah, it's shown up on T shirts, et cetera. And that's, like, a lot of what we try to. To drill is that trusting the story, faith is more of an actionable thing than just maybe a thought thing. I don't know. Yeah, I just want to talk a little bit about faith, and here's my first question, and this might be like a duh. Well, obviously, especially if people have been listening to Bama for a long time. But I think it's worth just, you know, surveying a little bit and reviewing. But what do you think are the common, I guess, misunderstandings about faith or, like, I don't want to be too judgmental or anything about, like, that, but, like, what do we commonly kind of get wrong about faith? When we think about what faith is, when we talk about when we use that word in church, where do you think we're kind of, you know, I guess, missing the mark or distorting maybe what a more biblical view of faith is, Marty?
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C
Well, usually, I mean, we. I feel like we. Usually we use words like belief, belief, and faith, which we use belief in a way that it's intellectual. Like, it's just. It's what I. It's what I think. It's what I know, or at least what I choose to believe. If I don't know it that's the faith element. But it's always this intellectual. It's always something that's happening in the mind, and it's always something in the abstract. It very rarely is a actionable thing I'm doing. I think one of the quotes you read there talked about. I think the beginner quote started talking about a verb is first of all a verb. We don't think about faithing. We just think about the abstract concept of intellectual assent. Agreeing with something, agreeing with the right things. That's faith.
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B
Yeah, it's often more a thing about what we believe about God rather than believing in God.
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C
Oh, that's good.
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A
Yeah, that's a good way of saying it. Actually, Buechner has another entry on believing where he talks about the difference between believing something and believing in something. And anyway, I won't go into that now, but it's basically what you're getting at. Is it a sort of a knowledge about even a peripheral sort of interest in something versus something that you are, like, deeply steeped and staked in and taken by that kind of belief?
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C
My memory, I was like, where is this? This is poking something in my memory. What was it? I've recently been asking people, what should I do next on YouTube and what should I do next for season 10? And I think three unique responses came back as faith versus belief. I think our listeners. I think we as individuals, obviously that was the most often repeated, not the most often. One of the most often repeated requests that we. That I deal with. So we make a distinction. Some, like, we're aware of the thing that I think you're. You're grabbing at here. We're like, wait a minute. Is this. Is that the same thing? Is this the same thing? What is that?
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A
Yeah. And as I've been preparing for this episode, you know, my first gut instinct is to be like, well, faith is like an. It's an action verb. It is the act of, you know, trusting God, which means you're going to do something. Right. And your belief may be wherever it's at, but the important thing is, like, the obedience. Right? And that was kind of my first knee jerk. And then the more and more I thought about it, the more I thought, like, I do think it's worthwhile. Especially because in church circles, faith has become such, like, a ubiquitous and unexamined sort of word. Like, we. We hear it and we. I think you're right, Marty, that we tend to think like, here is a sort of put your initials next to these sort of doctrinal statements and like, if you sign off on them, if you agree to them, then you have faith. And that, like, the project of defending the faith is like, don't uninitial these boxes.
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C
Right.
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Don't initial different boxes and protect, you know, the sort of tenets or the. The sort of core propositions of these boxes, like, protect them at all costs.
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C
Yeah.
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Which is why deconstruction becomes such, like, a scary word.
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C
Right.
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But I do think that actually, like, we go too far if we think that belief is not a part of faith at all or if it's a totally separate thing. And I think probably what's worth examining, which we can talk about in a bit, though, is like. Like, what is the way in which we believe something? Right. Because we can believe it at this sort of intellectual level, but there's also a way of believing with the heart way deep down, which is closer to, like, that's sort of the. That's a lot of times what motivates faithful action is there is a belief in something, you know.
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C
Yeah. I feel like we often overextend. Like, there's. There's often things in life, call them paradox, call it double point truth, call it whatever you want to, but we will overextend on one end, and then we react against it by running to the other end of the thing rather than recognizing that these two ideas hold hands. And I was just thinking the other day about a different but similar and related concept of, like, repentance and the Greek word, the idea of changing your mind. And the Hebraic concept of. No, no. It's about changing your actions, about changing your behavior. But you can't get away from the fact that these two things are not an either or. I don't pick the Hebrew or the Greek. They hold hands together. Because what I believe does affect what I do and my behavior.
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A
Yeah.
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C
And my behavior truly shows what I truly believe. So I think that's a good word.
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A
We're skipping ahead a little bit in my notes, but I want to pause for a second before we kind of get into looking at the relationship between what we believe and what we do as being under this umbrella of what we call faith. And I do think there are some potential real dangers. Like, if anything, we are sort of American Christian culture errs on the side of things. Faith as just a, you know, pure intellectual ascent, agreeing to the doctrines. Right. But what are the problems that you see, the sort of. The ripple effect, the ramifications, if we only conceive of faith as this kind of intellectual ascent? To these, you know, God ideas. What are some of the problems with that?
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B
I think it incentivizes you not to learn more, not to dig, not to wrestle. Because if you come to find out that any of those things that you've believed are not true or not what you thought they were, at least, then all of a sudden your faith is broken, meaningless, whatever you want to, you know, depending on what aspect of it you're losing, but you can't lose any of it. Or your faith has been a sham or like there's all sorts of ways that people could react to that, but it just, it makes it so you can't actually grow.
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Marty, what do you see?
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C
And you're asking specifically just about the kind of the over extension or fixation on the intellectual?
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A
Yes.
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C
Yeah, I mean, it's just. I mean, I'm trying not to commit the crime we just spoke of because everything in me is like, there's nothing that matters over there. Like, the only thing that matters is, well, darn it, your daily beakner is just so good. I keep coming back to it. Like, I can prove and explain things that don't matter, but I can't prove the things that really do. And like, we turn our faith and our belief into a bunch of things that largely. I'm afraid I'm going to overstate my case here. Or do we turn our faith into a bunch of things that don't matter rather than the things that ultimately do? Like, we argue about all these abstract concepts, but we are never actually changed people. So therefore, who cares about the Trinity or who cares about, like, we affirm all these right, abstract belief statements, but we don't become more loving people. We don't become more like God. So the danger is we just live in this world where nothing of import ever takes place.
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A
I think it's like it's not that they don't matter at all, but that we are improperly weighting them. And then what happens is it sort of engenders a kind of anemic or impotent. Well, faith in the sense of action, right, where it's like, oh, yeah, it's just all these, you know, what do you think about the Trinity? Or what do you think about the. I don't want to rock a bunch of boats here, but just, you know, insert thing here, okay. And it's like, if that's. If. If being able to like argue for and articulate those things is really what the essence of the faith is, then it really does. Like, well, why would I really worry about whether I am working justice for those who are marginalized or why would I really worry about whether I'm actually being compassionate towards my enemies? And I. I think what. A lot of people have experienced some extreme ostracization in the church because they have been told that their ideas are wrong or dangerous. But the reason why that is such an extreme ostracization, why it hits so hard, is because underlying it is this assumption that faith is agreeing to these ideas. And so to not agree to them or to change your mind about the ideas is literally to lose the faith in that scheme, in that way of looking at things.
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C
Yeah. Right.
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A
And that, like, people feel like they can't be forthcoming with their doubt, where doubt is an intellectual thing. Right. Like, I'm not really sure what I think about that. This idea. And that is by nature antithetical to what faith is. To have a question, you know.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Is to start losing faith. Because the faith is all about holding on to those ideas.
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C
Right.
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A
And so there's not really a place where people feel like maybe they don't have a place who are like, about the weightier matters of the law, as Jesus would say. Right. About mercy and compassion and justice. There's not a place for those who. Who wait that a lot. But, like, maybe what Jesus. I don't know if he would say this, but maybe our version of like, our time and our deal and our human and whatever is like. Well, but is. Is the sun proceeding from. You know what I'm saying?
- [14:24]
C
Yeah. Here's part of what my brain. My brain keeps forcing this into this metaphor. So my son has gotten into golf this year, freshman in high school. That's when I got into golf. I played. I played golf in high school. He's never played golf before. He gets in the golf this year. He goes out and obviously the coach starts him right where he should. On the driving range with your nine iron. And he's just driving range every day, four days a week, five days a week, three days a week. It's just driving range. It's driving range and it's driving range. And that's super needed. And then the coach is like, you need to go, like, get out with your dad. And you need to go, like, play. You need to go play nine, which just is such a different experience. Like, my son could just crush the driving range, which I don't think he feels like he's doing, but he could, like, perfect the driving range. It is something totally different to get. I mean, I feel like my brain keeps Trying to do this dance between the marriage of the things we believe and how our intellect shapes. Because you don't get out on the course and hit seven, seven irons in a row. You hit one seven iron and then you go play it as it lies. But to just go out and play nine holes without ever spending any time on the driving range and working anything out is also like. There's such a marriage between those two experiences and these two sides of the faith coin.
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A
Yeah.
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C
That come together into this thing we call the spiritual life.
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A
Yeah. So, you know, in the question of is faith what you believe or what you do? I think pretty obviously that's like a false dichotomy. Like you can't actually compartmentalize those things. And C.S. lewis, when he was writing about this, he actually, in Mere Christianity, he writes two chapters that are both entitled Faith, one right after the other. And it looks like a typo in your table of contents, but it's actually two different chapter because he is writing about both of these ways of looking at faith. And he, he says, you know, asking which one is more necessary to me seems like asking which blade is more necessary in a pair of scissors.
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C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep.
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A
So the question that I am, that I'm wondering about, that I would love to hear either of you sort of muse about, is like, well, what role then does belief, like, what does good belief look like? I guess not just right belief, if you hear what I'm saying, but. But like good belief. And how does that relate to then actually living a life of faith to try to prop up the belief side of it a little more for our listeners who maybe like, err a little bit more on the side of, well, it doesn't matter as much what you believe, it's just what you do. Like, what would you say to that?
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C
Like, you can't. You're not just gonna blindly live out something you haven't thought out. You're going to live out like you can't have faith without thought. You've thought something out that you believe. You're either believing something by default. Action doesn't exist in a vacuum. Action is the fruit and the product of things that we have given thought to, careful thought to things that we have. So there is this. I love the two scissors, the two blades of the scissors thing from Lewis. That's great because those two things have to go together. I cannot live out something I have. Not cognitively. I mean, I can live whatever I'm going to do just mindlessly.
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But.
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C
But a life of Intentionality comes from something that has been engaged thoughtfully. That thought process doesn't even have to be complete, but there will be a marriage between those two things.
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A
Yeah. And I think that's one of the problems we run into is it's like, no, you get the thought or the doctrine or whatever, the thing is held concretely and then it's fixed, right?
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C
Yeah. You can't do that because you have to. Like, the things you're living out will help you process the thought. You have a thought that helps you live and then the life helps you think. And back and forth and back and forth. Snip, snip, snip.
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A
I think what makes faith maybe faith, as opposed to simply just like thinking an idea or doing a thing, is that so. Louis also says that when he's talking about faith as belief, he says it's the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. And so I think part of what makes faith faith is that it's the component that's like persisting in it when things change. Well, when moods change. Right. Or when things become difficult. Does that make sense? Like what I'm saying? Except. But the thing is, that cannot mean, though I think sometimes that comes to be taken as well, your reason accepted at some point, you know that, I don't know, the Bible is inerrant or something, right?
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C
Yep.
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A
And so you can't change that. You have to hold on to it no matter how you feel. But there is, there is has to be room for like, I. Being unwilling to change ideas in light of like, new information is just like dogmatism, Right. Or like fundamentalism.
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C
Yep.
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A
And so there's like a dance in figuring out, like, what is it that I am being asked to like, hold on to and what is it that I am okay to re examine. And of course, everything is always re examinable, you know, but yeah, I don't know like that. It seems important to me too, that when we're talking about belief and hanging on to that and especially as like an engine for then like a faithful living, that like, the things we believe have to have penetrated like below the level of just like opinion, you know, like, because you can. You can have opinions about the Trinity, I guess. But if that, if it's like a belief that you hold about the Trinity that doesn't actually inform any of the way that you live your life, then that's really not a belief, that's just an opinion.
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B
I could see a scenario where somebody has previously had Some sort of belief, and they have modeled their life around the implications of that. And then they've kind of, like, turned away from their faith in some regard, but they're still doing those things that came out of that prior set of beliefs, that prior faith. Yeah. I don't exactly know how you would classify that, but you have the actions remaining from a faith that you no longer think that you hold to.
- [20:31]
A
Or maybe you recognize that I'm not holding to these things as I would like to. Right. Intellectually, things are changing or whatever. And so I think sometimes a life, an action of faith, can actually sort of bolster, like, your belief. Right. It can pull you back. It's. That's why we have even something as basic as, like, some of our spiritual practices and disciplines. Right. Is they root us to the spot when our moods or our. Even, like, our thoughts might be drifting the other direction. But I think it also can go the other way, where, if your eggs are in the basket of faith as action, as faithful action, doing what God says to do, obedient action. The thing is, like, we oftentimes fail at doing that. Right. Well, I don't know about you, Marty, but I definitely do.
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C
I mean, I suppose I knew that.
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A
There is a faithlessness that we do engage in. Right?
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C
Yeah.
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A
And you can even become despairing about that. And I think that sometimes, actually, it's then the belief part that pulls you back to the reality of God's grace, of God's mercy, of God's desire to still partner with you. And it has to be that, that belief that hopefully is registered not just in the mind, but down in the heart. That's like, okay, we can get back on the horse now.
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C
Yeah, maybe there's actually something really helpful to what we've talked about before, about the Hebrew concept of heart.
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A
Okay.
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C
Versus the mind and the seat of volition, the seat of will. It's where your choice comes from. And in our Western world, mind is just cerebral, it's just intellectual. But in the Hebraic concept, it's all kind of the same. It's the same energy. It's the same place where it all comes from, where I make my choices and I choose to do something. And I think we talked about that on this series at some point. And so I wonder if that distinction is even helpful here in tying together the things that we think versus the things that we also do, because they're all wrapped up together. And sometimes my doer is leading my thinker, and sometimes my thinker is leading my doer. But there's a relationship there between all that.
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A
Yeah. And I'm just thinking about what that means for faith as specifically as a virtue. Right. Because virtue is like an ingrained way of being where, you know, you practiced it to the point that it's habitual. And I, And I think maybe it's just the case that, like, like you just said, at times it's the thinking that has to, like, be the thing you're leaning on to pull back the doing into place, and other times the other way around. And hopefully, like, we are habitually training ourselves in both. Like, we are habitually sort of girding up our. Our belief, the belief of the heart in the things that, you know, we. We hold deeply to be true about God and about people in the world and at the same time need to be habitually training our action kind of, you know, basically to just go. The way of Jesus is really what we're talking about.
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C
Yeah.
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A
So let me ask you this. Like, what role do you think questions and doubts play in a life of faith?
- [23:39]
C
It's what keeps something alive and vibrant. It's. I don't know if it's like a. It's like working out the body in a gymnasium. It's like, like doubt. It's like, okay, wait a minute. Is this what I think it is? Is this. Let me, Let me double check. Let me, Let me triple check. Let me think about this. Think about this again. Let me reconsider. Why does this bother me? Why does it prick my conscience? Why? So sometimes it might be working something out, but sometimes it might also be the thing that leads us to like, oh, this concept is even deeper and wider because I was able to poke some holes in it, or I was able to find that it wasn't actually because of my doubt and faith. This thing gets more complex and more colorful and more robust. And it isn't as clean and it's not as simple, but it is more powerful and more efficacious in my life because of doubt. Because doubt wouldn't let me just go. Yeah, that's what it is. Doubt made me go, okay, but is it? But is it? But what about this? But what about that? But what about. So doubt makes sure that the things that we believe in are growing, living, being examined. I was just driving over a bridge the other day, and I looked at the bridge and I was like, man, I hope they're testing this thing every year, because I drive over this bridge all the time, and it looks like it's just about ready to fall apart. And if that were my spiritual metaphor, like, doubt is the thing that helps me go, is this bridge okay? Is this bridge okay? Is this bridge okay? Because that bridge is going to need to get me where I'm going.
- [25:09]
A
I think one of the hard things about just doubt at all, especially early on, and I think this is something that we maybe can, for those of us who are a little bit older and who have been going through a process of just, like, being open to examining and, like, re. Questioning things. One thing we can model. Because I work with college students and so do you, Marty. And the thing I think that's really scary is when a doubt comes in, it very quickly in their mind becomes all consuming. And it's like, well, if this one thing isn't what I thought.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Then suddenly, like, is there even a God? You know?
- [25:48]
C
Right.
- [25:49]
A
But I think if we can learn to take the bridges one bridge at a time and in context with the text, which is, of course, what Bama is about, then if we can get a little bit of experience with, like, let's test this one thing at a time and discover that when I did test it, and even if my answer came out different on the other side, my whole life of faith didn't actually explode or crumble or dissolve. Because I know that there are stories and there are the boogeyman out there. That's like, well, but then. And now they're not. Now they're an atheist, you know? And like, that's. There are so many people for whom that is not true. Where the questioning becomes. Instead of like a threat, it becomes sort of like a goad or like a prod. That's like, okay. And Barbara Brown Taylor writes about this. She's like, okay, so it turned out that God wasn't like this. So then who is God? It's an invitation to, like, just another question.
- [26:42]
C
Yeah.
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A
Okay. And so then. And then what? She's like, you know, God. God didn't come and, like, protect me from the bad guys when I needed it. Okay, so God's not a policeman. Then who is God?
- [26:51]
C
Right?
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A
And so just. Yeah, And I think, like, at rock bottom, there's sort of this, like. I think, Marty, you're. You did some writing about this in a book that might be coming out pretty soon.
- [27:00]
C
Oh, yeah, I did some writing even. I was thinking about some quotes in my first book that, yeah, there's something about what do I believe? Do I believe God, Jesus and the Bible are big enough that I. That they're far bigger than what I understand. Or what I believe in this moment or how I understand my faith, which is totally incomplete. But God and Jesus in the Bible must be bigger than that behind this. That's what Barbara Brown Taylor's getting at. But yeah, I mean, you and I are. You and I both wrote a book and that's coming out here soon.
- [27:29]
A
We sure did. You're talking about, like, how do we. Do we fundamentally, you know, if we have to pick between two sort of metaphors, do we think of God as like a mystery, you know, or do we think of God as sort of just a proof to math out or like a puzzle, like a Rubik's Cube to make sure we get all the pieces in place.
- [27:46]
C
Yeah.
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A
And again, like, there's, there's, there's more. There's more rigid, systematic ones. Actually, I'm thinking about the Velvet Elvis now and the difference between, like, the things I believe.
- [27:58]
C
Yes.
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A
Is it like a sort of wall of bricks? Of bricks. But actually, I don't think that's the best. It's more like a Jenga tower is really what he's describing.
- [28:07]
C
Yeah.
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A
Because actually brick walls, you know, they can be integrated enough that you can take out sections and the wall can still stand.
- [28:13]
C
Sure.
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A
But like a Jenga tower. Well, if I pull this one out, suddenly the whole thing. Or do I think of it like a trampoline that's, you know, meant to be bounced on and each of the beliefs or the doctrines is like a spring in the trampoline where I can test it and pull it and stretch it. Yeah, totally. Are you ready for a personal question?
- [28:29]
C
Am I ever. I know that I'm just set up. I'm let you direct it at Brent, though. You. You've asked me enough. Brent's been quiet.
- [28:34]
A
Well, you don't get to dodge it entirely. But I'm going to start with what?
- [28:37]
C
No, I get to choose. I'm the executive producer.
- [28:39]
A
No, I just reject that. No. So thinking about your own faith, what is the basis for your faith? And I'm not asking in a way that's like you're giving a court testimony and you need to prove anything, but just what's ground zero for you? What sparked faith in the first place and then also recognizing that it needs to be re sparked again and again, like over the years. What are some of the things that have done that, that have bolstered or enlivened your faith?
- [29:12]
B
Well, most recently, Bama has sparked it because I think my faith was just kind of like it was what I was Talking about earlier, where it was like I had this faith and then that, like, from that came a particular set of actions that I do. And I was still doing all those things, but the faith behind it was just kind of like not really alive. And then coming into Bama now 12 years ago and getting to go through the whole story and see where God started and what God has been doing the whole time in the meantime, I mean, it's crazy to think about. I thought I knew everything there was to know about God. I had all the apologetics books. I could give an answer to all those things that people talked about. And there was so much more that I just. I had no idea. So that's the most recent spark. The basis. I don't like ground zero. I've just always. I just grew up in a Christian home, so there was always that foundation. I think my mom is probably the basis for my faith. My legal mom, my bio mom as well now at this point. But ground zero origins. My legal mom, she's the one who. I saw her faith lived out. And I think that is probably ultimately what my faith is built on, because it wasn't my dad, and I don't think it was really. I mean, I went to a Christian school, but I. But that's not really the stuff that stuck with me so much. It was the stuff that I saw my mom doing. I think that's the ground zero.
- [31:04]
C
Yeah. I was trying to articulate something very similar to Brent because I was raised in a Christian home as well. I was feeling and thinking very similar things. One of the differences, or maybe how I would articulate it from my experience, that I'm deeply grateful for. I mean, I do a lot of. I don't know if I would call it bashing, but very critical thinking about my fundamentalist upbringings. But my fundamentalist mom taught me about the person of Jesus. Like, I had an affinity for theology. I loved to study, but that was not the basis of my faith. The basis for my faith that I always kept coming back to and falling back on, even 40 years later, was somebody had introduced me to the person of Jesus, which is hard to write about in your Google Doc notes. I don't even know how to articulate that. But it was a person that I knew, somebody I could talk to. And that's very mystical. But not for the 6, 7, 8 9-year-old person who said the sinner's prayer. Not for the. Like. That was the good stuff. That was the stuff that, as deep as I dove into Calvinism and As rigidly as I held, that didn't touch the person of Jesus experience of my childhood, that which my faith is built upon. And I don't know if that matches wherever you're going in your notes, Reid, but good luck. You asked for a personal story. There you go.
- [32:35]
A
I'm not trying to go anywhere in my notes. I just want to hear about what it is. I mean, for me, I was also raised in a Christian home and raised in a church that now I would probably have a lot of disagreements with theology, but it wasn't the theology that sparked faith for me in those churches. Like, I grew up in a charismatic church. And again, there were things that went on there that I would probably think were pretty strange now or I would be skeptical about. But there was also, like a. There was a vibrancy, there was a spirit, there was a vitality that even if the thinking was errant, there was something very palpable and alive there that I just loved being at church.
- [33:22]
C
Yeah.
- [33:23]
A
Because I felt that sort of energy, you know, and it became a basis for faith occasionally. Like, I remember a few different times just like, these experiences that I won't call them mystical because I don't think that highly of myself. I don't think I'm cool enough to have a mystical experience yet in my life, especially not at 14. But, like, I would have these experiences that were just very. I would call it direct. Like, the difference between knowing electricity is there because you flip the switch and the light comes on, and then knowing the electricity is there because I grabbed a hot wire and I didn't realize it was. That's. And that jolt go. That's how I felt. You know what I mean?
- [34:05]
C
Yeah.
- [34:05]
A
And then there became this long journey after that to try to discover, so what is actually the source of this? You know, what's going through this wire? What is this God? And what is the truth about this God, which, you know, I discovered as I went to college that it was just a lot more complex than I think the church that I grew up in would have said it was. There's this quote that I want to read from Simone vay, and I actually found this in this amazing book called Zero at the Bone by Christian Wyman. I might have talked about it before, actually, for any of our, like, you know, sort of thinkier, literary, philosophical listeners. I think this might be the single most important book on faith that I would recommend. It's called Zero at the bone, 50 entries against despair by Christian Wyman. Wyman's a poet and A writer who was diagnosed with cancer earlier on in his life and nearly died and lived through it. And he just writes. He's, like, tough. He doesn't take anything for granted. He is pretty rigorous in his thinking, but he's just so full of, like, this poetic heart. He's from Texas. He teaches at Yale now. I heard him speak at the Festival of Faith and Writing a couple years ago, and it was just incredible. Anyway, so Zero at the Bone is a great book for people who are grappling with both the ideas and the life of faith. And in it, he quotes Simone vay, who says, God wears himself out through infinite thickness of time and space in order to reach the soul and to captivate it. This is what I felt like was happening to me at my church, that God was reaching out to captivate my soul.
- [35:47]
C
Yeah.
- [35:48]
A
And then she goes on and says, if the soul allows a pure and utter consent, though brief as a lightning flash, to be torn from it, if you consent, even for a moment, then God conquers the soul. And I feel like I can remember those times where it's like, okay, I'm just gonna let myself go here. And there was something captivating to me. But then Simone VAY writes, when the soul has become entirely his, he abandons it. He leaves it completely alone. And it has in its turn, but gropingly, to cross the infinite thickness of time and space in search of him whom it loves. It is thus the soul, starting from the opposite end, making the same journey that God made towards it. And that is the cross, is what she says. And I don't fully understand that last sentence, but I do want to say that. And I know this is not the experience for everybody. Actually, if I read this to Leanne and I was like, doesn't that just resonate with you? And she's like, no, I don't. That's not my life at all. But I know that there are people out there who are like, I had something where I was captivated.
- [36:47]
C
Yeah.
- [36:47]
A
And it felt like God conquered my soul.
- [36:50]
C
Yep.
- [36:51]
A
In the most compassionate, merciful, loving way. And then suddenly I was like, where did God go? And I need to. And I was getting ideas about God. I wasn't sure if they were the right ones. And I just start doing this search, like, trying to find the one my soul loves, the truth of the one my soul loves. And this is kind of my whole then journey of faith across the rest of my life is like, trying to make my way through both what I think and what I do back to God, that is, for me, a picture of, like, what faith has been like. And for me, it's. I don't know, there's all different kinds of things that spark it again and again as I'm, like, making that journey where I feel that electricity another time. Sometimes it's in loud, raucous parties with my friends. Sometimes it's in quiet moments of stillness. I mean, there's room for all of it, for sure.
- [37:39]
C
Yeah, that's a beautiful quote.
- [37:41]
A
The last thing I want to say in just sort of our sketching of faith and what it is, what it's like, I did a sermon. I honestly thought about just reading this sermon again as part of this episode, but it's too much. And so we can link it on Mark, chapter 8. When Jesus is with the disciples, and. And he's like, yeah, who do people say that I am? And they're like, oh, some say Elijah, you know, some say John the Baptist. Some say you're a prophet. And he seems to, like, not even really care about that answer, because then he's just like, yeah, but who do you say I am? And I wrote about that. And I think that this is actually the defining question of faith is who do you say I am? But again, that it's a question that we can't just answer with words or with thoughts. And fortunately and unfortunately, we live in a time and place where we're just inundated with God talk. Like, there are a million Christian books. There are a million Christian podcasts. There is this podcast. There are many different things that are all just talking about God all the time. And that can be good, but it can also be a detriment because it's like, who do you say I am? And I'm like, well, I just say whatever Marty said from the podcast, or I'll say whatever, you know, John Mark Comer said from his book. Not that those are bad things, but they're not my things is the thing. Right. That's. Just because I can repeat that or just because I find it intriguing doesn't mean that that answer has actually wormed its way down in me and become my genuine answer for who do I say that he is? And I think that God asks each of us one question, and our whole life is the answer. And that answer is like, well, this is what my faith looked like, you know, and it was. It was a life I lived.
- [39:23]
C
Which is why some of those voices and thoughts can be helpful. Some of those podcasts and resources, they help us shape those things. But the answer that matters to that question that God asks us is all the. It's my thoughts, it's my life. It's my response. It's my belief.
- [39:39]
A
Yeah.
- [39:39]
C
It's the words that I use. It's Peter saying, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. But it's also Peter's life that would testify to that.
- [39:47]
A
Yeah.
- [39:47]
C
And behind that is a belief that Peter actually believed that or his life would not have. So it's. It's your whole life. I do love that.
- [39:53]
A
It's kind of amazing, though, right, how, like, you can be even one of the voices. Like, we are some of the voices. And, like, I can do a really good job of saying a lot of things and actually avoiding that question for my own self. And the stillness that exists just between God and me. Right. Of ignoring that. Well, okay, okay, Reid, but who do you say I am? And like, oh, then you feel, like, kind of shook, you know?
- [40:20]
C
Yeah, yeah. Brent. No, I'm just kidding. So I would recommend. I've read that sermon. He sent it to us before we recorded, and I was like, I don't know what we're doing with this, but this is pretty good. Everybody should click on that link after this episode and check that out.
- [40:33]
A
So the text conversation. I here is what I think. I don't think we need to rehash a bunch of things about faith. There are like a. Like, just go listen to the rest of the Bayma podcast is kind of what I have to say about. Like, what does the text have to say about faith? But I did have an interesting idea. I want to play a little game with you guys. Okay. And maybe this is like, totally. This is totally a silly game. Maybe this is nonsense. Maybe it can be a helpful exercise. But I. I want to do an experimental survey on our sex of 1st century Judaism that you talked about in whatever episode that was the introduction to.
- [41:07]
C
Oh, sure. Yep. The zealots and the Herodians and all that.
- [41:11]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when we talked about some of the other virtues, we talk about, like, well, what does this virtue look like if we don't have the other virtues along with it?
- [41:19]
C
Sure.
- [41:19]
A
And so I was thinking about, okay, so what does faith look like if we don't have these other virtues? And how does that. Like, what. What do we label that manifestation of faith? And then here's the fun game is, is there a correlation or can we match up? Faith without wisdom is like, that's kind of the vibe of this sect of 1st century Judaism and faith without temperance Is this one? Okay, so can we try?
- [41:46]
C
Yes, I think so. But this is hard. I can even see the options in front of me and this is hard to match up.
- [41:51]
A
Okay, well, I mean, and it may not be. Obviously this is just a game. I'm not saying please, nobody take this and be like, ah. Obviously the zealots were. They didn't have any courage in their faith. That's not what.
- [42:04]
C
Everybody chill out in Baymas session nine.
- [42:06]
A
Everybody just relax. Okay? But I do think it is maybe at least helpful and trying to get a vibe for people maybe who become, you know, extreme in this way or that. It's not necessarily that they lack faith. It may be that they lack something to go along with their faith. Okay, I got it.
- [42:24]
C
I got it. I've stared at him long enough. I've got it.
- [42:26]
A
Okay, so let me just run through the four that I have, like the faith without the four other cardinal virtues, and we'll talk about those and then we'll go back and you can say which one you think is which one. Okay.
- [42:37]
C
Yeah.
- [42:38]
A
All right. So faith without wisdom, I'm going to call this. And you can tell me if I'm wrong. I'm going to call this like a kind of fundamentalism. Ok. So if wisdom is the ability to discern not just what is true, but when it is true, you are cleverly discerning, recognizing that, like it's not always one thing or another. Like sometimes it's this, sometimes it's that there's a tension. Right. Wisdom, there's like a tension that you're trying to live in between two things. So faith without wisdom is a fundamentalism. Okay.
- [43:09]
C
Yep.
- [43:10]
A
What do you think? Is that fair?
- [43:11]
C
Those are the words that throw me the most. But the fair.
- [43:14]
A
Fair, what do you mean? What words are the ones that throw you the most?
- [43:17]
C
I don't know. Sure. If I would associate them with different. I want to swap them some.
- [43:21]
A
Okay, well, we can talk about that. Let me just. I'll go through these and then you can say what you think they should be because I was also swapping. And again, this might be totally silly, but faith without temperance. So faith without the ability to know when enough is enough, without moderation, self control. I think of that, like we see that manifested as a kind of fanaticism.
- [43:40]
C
Yep.
- [43:41]
A
Where it's like the cause above everything and you will even like be destructive towards other human beings because they have become. Does that make sense? I mean, this doesn't happen in our world at all. Right. Now I know that we are Totally over that as a culture. But, yeah. Faith without courage. This. I am just calling it a kind of therapeutic deism.
- [44:04]
C
Nice.
- [44:05]
A
And what I mean is that, like, this is kind of like, I go to church because I get an idea of God that makes me feel better, and nothing is really asked of me beyond that.
- [44:14]
C
Yep.
- [44:15]
A
Again, totally. Probably foreign to our culture. I don't think there are churches like this, but if there were, if we seek churches or people marked by, like, just sort of a. Yeah. I just want to, like, God makes me feel good. Like, I would say there's no courage in your faith. Okay.
- [44:31]
C
Yep.
- [44:31]
A
And then the last one is faith without justice.
- [44:35]
C
Yeah.
- [44:36]
A
And I would call that in a neutral way. I would call that piety.
- [44:41]
C
Yep.
- [44:42]
A
In a maybe more emphatic way, I would call it oppressive piety.
- [44:47]
C
Yeah, baby.
- [44:48]
A
Makes sense.
- [44:49]
C
Yeah.
- [44:49]
A
Do you want to shift any of those around? Nope.
- [44:51]
C
Not anymore.
- [44:51]
A
You don't want to do that anymore?
- [44:52]
C
No. Your words helped. Thanks, Reed. For once, your words help.
- [44:55]
A
Finally. Brent, what do you think? Are you good with this?
- [44:57]
B
I. Yeah, I think I'm good.
- [44:59]
A
Okay. All right, so now we're going to. We're going to match them up. So faith without wisdom. No, wisdom. Fundamentalism. We're rigid. We're uncritical in our thinking. Who do you think that would be?
- [45:12]
C
Essays, baby. Essays.
- [45:14]
A
Brent, what do you think? Are you on board with that?
- [45:17]
B
I don't know. I think faith without courage is going to be your audience.
- [45:24]
A
Oh, play the game, Brent. Play the game.
- [45:28]
B
No.
- [45:29]
A
Who is faith without wisdom? Don't talk through your whole process.
- [45:32]
B
I don't know.
- [45:33]
A
I can't. I will say that I think this was actually the hardest one for me to.
- [45:38]
C
The first two are the hardest. That's why Brent has to do what he's doing. I had to do it, too. I just wasn't able to say it out loud.
- [45:43]
A
Okay.
- [45:44]
C
Because I, too. I, too was like, we're just going to do it, Reed. We're going to screw up your game. I'm with Brent. C. Is definitely the Herodians. Moral, therapeutic deism is Herodians.
- [45:53]
A
So a Herodian faith.
- [45:55]
C
Yep.
- [45:56]
A
A Herodian way of living is a faith without courage.
- [45:59]
C
Yeah.
- [46:00]
A
Which kind of stings when I think you're absolutely right.
- [46:03]
C
Absolutely.
- [46:03]
A
Which kind of stings because we have. Because we have talked about how if there's, like, the sect that most of us would identify with, it's Herodian. So again, I say it lovingly to me and to everybody, but maybe we have faith and we're just a Bunch of cowards. Like, we don't have courage to go out and actually do the hard things or.
- [46:26]
C
Yep.
- [46:26]
A
Yeah. Okay. That's great. Okay. So I think you're right. Faith without courage. Herodians, for sure. Marty. I also think you're right that faith without wisdom is the Essenes.
- [46:33]
C
Yeah.
- [46:33]
A
And maybe, like, I don't know, you know, it's kind of a fundamentalism. It's just sort of that we're going to withdraw. We're just totally committed to, like, we're just copying the text. We're preserving it. You know, there's no. I'm not saying it's the same kind of fundamentalism that we have here today, but I would say that that's probably what it looks like.
- [46:50]
C
Yep.
- [46:50]
A
There's no having to discern and make difficult choices out in the real world. How does our faith intersect with the city?
- [46:57]
C
Yep.
- [46:58]
A
Because we're out here doing our thing.
- [46:59]
C
Yep.
- [47:00]
A
Okay, we got two left.
- [47:02]
C
Faith without temperance is results. You explained as, like, violence to other people. That's the next easy one.
- [47:08]
A
No, I had to change. So I. I put fanaticism. Actually, the original word I had was zealot tree. But if you call them zealots, then everybody's going to know that we're talking about the zealots.
- [47:17]
C
That was the word that actually threw me, because I want to put fanaticism with Essenes. But when you explained it with the virtue language, without temperance, without self control, without that zealots.
- [47:26]
A
Yeah, I know. I mean, yeah, I do think that this is actually a very. I'm trying to talk carefully here, but I think this is pretty relevant for our current moment and that there are probably people on all sides who need to step back and say, like, do I need for once to say to my faith, like, know when to say enough, you know?
- [47:44]
C
Yep.
- [47:45]
A
Like, maybe there's something more important than my ideas here.
- [47:49]
C
Preach.
- [47:50]
A
Yeah. So then that leads us to the last one, Faith without justice. Our potentially oppressive piety is Pharisees, baby.
- [47:57]
C
Y.
- [47:58]
A
Boom. Isn't that kind of fun how, like.
- [48:00]
C
Yeah, absolutely.
- [48:01]
A
It's sort of like looking at these groups through the lens of, like, what virtue are they lacking? Which is to say, what about my own faith and, like, what of the virtues Is my faith lacking? And how does that lead me to not be the follower of Jesus that I could be?
- [48:15]
C
I guess that means the seven deadly sins are the Sadducees. No, I'm just kidding. There you go.
- [48:21]
B
Yeah. I don't have time to explain this, but here's Where I land with it.
- [48:25]
C
Okay.
- [48:25]
B
I'm going to say faith without wisdom is Pharisees. Faith without temperance is Essenes. Without courage is Herodians, and without justice is zealots.
- [48:34]
A
Okay, I see where you are going with the zealots not having a sense. Well, you're gonna have to say more, Brent. You actually are gonna have to say a little bit more.
- [48:46]
C
He doesn't have to say more. I'm gonna tell him what my Bible college professor told me.
- [48:49]
B
What's that?
- [48:50]
C
No, that's totally great. You can think that, Brent, and you can be wrong. Sorry.
- [48:55]
B
The zealots think they have justice, but they don't have true justice. They have their own sense of justice.
- [49:00]
C
Which is another way of saying wisdom.
- [49:02]
B
Sure.
- [49:02]
A
Yeah. That's. That's their fundamental error is like one of a delusion. Right. Well, here's. They're all. Here's the thing, as we've been saying throughout this whole series, everything is interwoven. There is nuts. All right.
- [49:15]
B
I feel like I could get any of them to fit into Faith Without Temperance.
- [49:18]
C
Yeah, that's true. Brent's right.
- [49:20]
A
Well, hopefully that was a fun game for everybody.
- [49:22]
C
It was.
- [49:23]
A
You got a neat little party trick. You can go if you got other Baymont friends who haven't listened to episodes yet and be like, so, Essenes, which of the four cardinal virtues is their faith missing?
- [49:32]
C
I want to be at the kind.
- [49:33]
B
Of party where that is the party trick.
- [49:36]
A
Well, sorry, I don't mean to offend anybody, but I do not want to be at that party.
- [49:41]
B
Oh, come on.
- [49:43]
A
Okay. All right, well, let's get to the end here.
- [49:46]
C
Yes.
- [49:47]
A
And I actually just phrased this one as a question because I'm curious what you guys would say, because the last part is always like, what is God's image? What is the thing God is hoping for when it comes to us in the virtue of, in this case, faith? And usually I have an idea or an answer for this is what I think God is aiming for. But I'm curious what you guys think. What do you think that God wants from us when it comes to faith, when it comes to how we believe and how we act, how would you describe sort of the best we can hope for, like, the image of God in that arena?
- [50:20]
C
I don't know if this is a good answer, but the thing that keeps coming to mind is Philippians 2, that if God is like Jesus, and if Jesus is a great way to understand the image of God, there's something to the kenosis, the emptying. There's something to the here's God poured into human flesh, and the one thing he doesn't need to do is to hold on and control. He empties himself because the moment can hold it. He empties himself because all of it can contain what needs to be contained. He doesn't have. There's no worry, there's no anxiety, there's no but what if. And I don't know how that relates to God, but somehow the character of God is one that goes. This whole story works in one direction. You don't have to be scared about where this all shakes out. There's that trust, there's that emptying, there's that giving, that generosity, that hospitality of his own nature and himself. And I don't know how to necessarily connect all the dots, but that's the thought that keeps what's. What's the image of God? What is the part of him that he wants in this virtue is the. I want to use the word surrender, but it's hard to think of God surrendering to himself. But that's the word that keeps coming to mind, this emptying, this empty and surrender.
- [51:47]
A
You know, I actually think it's kind of amazing that you said Philippians 2, because I don't have notes here for you to see. But I was thinking about the sort of catchphrase that embodies this idea between being people of belief and being people of action. And I thought about actually the very next verse that follows, that sort of hymn on kenosis where Paul writes, you know, as you've always obeyed in my presence, now in my absence. And he says, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Sure, Golly, you work it out.
- [52:24]
C
Yeah.
- [52:25]
A
This is your action to do. This is what faith looks like. You work it out with fear and trembling, of course. And then he says, for it is God who works in you to will and act in order to fulfill his good purpose. And so there's like the both and ness. Do you see it?
- [52:40]
C
Yep, yep.
- [52:41]
A
You work it out. That's your action. But it's God who works in you to will to believe. And that's God that is giving that. He's working it. It's a partnership. It's a gift. It's sort of this, like, holy mystery, this cycle, you know, that's not a vicious cycle, but a. I guess a virtuous one.
- [52:57]
C
Yeah.
- [52:57]
A
Yeah. And that's right after that whole thing that you were just saying, Marty.
- [53:00]
B
Yeah, well, and the idea of God being in you, it's not like God could just do all this stuff externally without us, but we're there. And we're supposed to imitate me as I imitate Christ. We're supposed to look like Jesus, but we're not supposed to be Jesus. So it requires this transformation. So are you being transformed? And if you're not being transformed, then how am I supposed to see the faith?
- [53:31]
C
Yeah.
- [53:31]
A
Okay, well, I'm just going to let that. I'm going to let that stand for maybe what a picture of the image of God in us looks like, us being people of faith. And let's get on to our last section here with our self examination questions. Berent, will you go through those for us, please?
- [53:46]
B
Who do I say he is? How do I say it? Is there some way that I know I am not trusting the story right now? Who could come alongside me to help? Is there a belief that feels scary that God is calling me to investigate? Is there a step that feels scary that God is calling me to take?
- [54:12]
A
All right, that's all I got for this, for this conversation. Just a couple more to go in the series now. Hope and love, right?
- [54:21]
C
Ooh, baby.
- [54:22]
B
All right, Reid, thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. Thank you for challenging us to think about our own faith. I'm sure the listeners would say the same. I hope the listeners would say the same. But the wrestling is beautiful and it sounds like this is something that's been on the hearts and minds of listeners recently anyway. So I think this particular conversation was a good one to have today. And listeners, if you have any thoughts you want to share with us, you can go to bamannoceptionship.com use that contact page. We'd love to hear what you're wrestling with, what you thought about this conversation, if any of this stuff has sparked some new ideas, maybe particularly for those of you who mentioned to Marty that this idea, this thing between faith and belief and how those things interact, has this changed any of your thoughts? Has this helped you along in any way? We'd love to hear from you. We read all of the stuff that you guys send in. Even if we can't respond to it, even if we can't address it it on a Q and A or whatever. We live to see God's work in you. So thank you all for joining us in this work. Thank you for joining us today. We'll talk to you again soon.