Perseverance

This is an essay I wrote a while back for my ministry, but it has resurfaced on the waves of my mind, and I want to share it with all of you:

Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. Matthew 24:12-14

As I enter into this discussion, I first have to appeal to my reader. While reading this essay, please be patient with my words, and remember that they are my words, not the final word. I will indulge in a little speculation in some areas that I, admittedly, do not fully understand. I am embarking on a journey that God has initiated, but I will not fully comprehend its meaning until I finish the course. My hope is that even if you disagree with my conclusions, you will use these thoughts as a springboard to launch yourself into deep contemplation. I have prayed over these thoughts and humbly submit them to you as one who appreciates the responsibility God has placed upon me as a teacher of His word.

When a person contemplates his or her inevitability, he or she will often find happiness in the outcome of our faith, the eternal life that is spent with the Godhead. However, many, if not all, even though they might embrace faith, find in their deep contemplations a sense of dread when the idea of death enters their minds. Even worse, for the atheist, there is no sense of joy for the afterlife, only a sense of dread that death is final. All people, thinking from the human perspective, dread the inevitable death that each of us must face unless we are taken up beforehand. I must conclude, as many before me have, that humanity is opposed to death because it is against our nature. This is evident from the account in Genesis. We are afraid of death because it is a punishment. If we did not dread the consequence of death, how would it be a punishment? Christ has conquered death’s power over us, but we still must endure death to receive the final reward of Christ’s atonement.

This unknown barrier keeps our joy about the afterlife forever in the heart but limits the mind’s capacity to grasp such a concept. The human brain responds to experience; hence, the mysterious nature of death breeds fear. Death cannot be experientially known until our lives end, and our minds have no guarantee of what will become of us afterwards since they cannot retrieve assurance from a prior experience. This is the human condition. I still consider myself a Timothy of the faith: I am young but willing to grow. Therefore, I know that more experienced Christians, those more mature in the faith, have a deeper understanding of what I am going to say. Many, I imagine, have passed through this phase of allowing uncertainty to have a degree of control over their mental grasp of eternal existence, even as they allow their hearts to experience the peace beyond understanding. However, I have a hunch that the uncertainty that is a condition of the human mind will remain with us to at least some degree until the end of this life. Otherwise, we become more than human. This is why Christians need a peace that is beyond understanding. Our minds cannot grasp fully the power from which the peace comes, for it comes from the heart through faith and pacifies the mind only after being realized through the faith of the heart: “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

Uncertainty is a product of the human condition, and there is no need to deny this. As philosophers and theologians have said for thousands of years, we are incapable of fully knowing most, if not all things for certain. The “knowing” I speak of is the “knowing” of the brain, a limited organ that receives data and processes ideas according to the experiences a person has had. We are constantly in the state of learning. Faith, then, is exactly that, unless we think in a hyper-Calvinistic sense. Faith is a “knowledge” of another sort, a knowledge of the heart. Therefore, faith is not a species of head knowledge that will supplant uncertainty, although it can guide us in a manner that enables us to deal with our uncertainty. Faith from the heart can inform our minds and allow us to comprehend that there is a greater understanding that supersedes the faculties of human intellect. Spiritual knowledge is a knowledge that we cannot learn but must receive from God.

Uncertainty, sometimes called doubt, has acquired a negative connotation in the mind of the Christian. We are taught that if we are uncertain about particular topics, we are somehow living wrongly. I must respectfully disagree. It is how we treat doubt that shows whether or not we are living properly. If we avoid questions by pretending we do not have them, we are not living honestly before our God and before others. When we hide behind a pretense of objective knowledge, we make others feel inadequate because they know in their hearts they have not found an objective truth that the mind can grasp. There is a God who loves us, but to know this is to understand it not with our brains but with our souls. The truth for any person of contemplation is that we can never fully comprehend the metaphysical by our own merit. We can never wrap up the existence of God in our minds. This is not to say that our mind is completely incapable of recognizing evidences of God, quite the contrary. However, our brain, limited to the space between our ears, limited by the five senses, limited by the finite time in which it has to learn, limited by its physical weaknesses, can never fully grasp the extent of our limitless God and His limitless love for us. Therefore, there is no shame in uncertainty of the mind.

As a parallel, let us think about another humanistic condition that we have made others believe to be evil. Many Christians treat temptation as if it were a sin within itself. However, was Christ not tempted in the desert by Satan himself? Otherwise, why would we call this biblical teaching “The temptation of Christ”? Christ demonstrates that temptation is not sin, but the manner in which we deal with the temptation that proves our heart.

Uncertainty, if treated incorrectly, can lead down a path of faithlessness, but if handled properly, can be a driving force for us to seek God out in everything. Doubt is not to be glorified, but it is to be acknowledged. Is it not uncertainty that lends power to faith? Is not faith, by definition, the act of overcoming the real uncertainty that lives within us? Would faith be faith if we had no doubt? Would it not be called objective knowledge? This is not to say, “Yes, doubt exists and you will just have to live with it.” This is to say that if we acknowledge before God and one another that doubt is a part of our lives, we can then accept God’s guidance to a path of understanding that usurps doubt’s preeminence. Faith is our trump card.

To live properly by faith, we must confront doubt without blinking. We must allow our faith to inform uncertainty, not the other way around. This is truly the power of Christianity. We must reverse our manner of thinking from head to heart, and make it a path of heart to head.

To make myself perfectly clear, I must mention something. Development of the mind is of upmost importance. If our purpose is to follow God, the One who gave us intelligence and reason, it would be odd for us to deny our mental capacity when thinking of God. It would be strange to turn the faith into something that is exclusively about emotion and has nothing to do with reason. Reason, however, is limited, and faith goes beyond what the mind can know. Therefore, although people often see doubt (or, should I say, uncertainty) as a flaw in someone’s faith, this is not entirely the case. Doubt is a product of the flawed mind, while faith is a divinely appointed ability. The origins of the two are from different sources. Therefore, faith and doubt exist on two separate levels. Doubt, therefore, is not a hole in the heart’s faith, but a product of the mind. Thus, if we think properly, we can allow faith to conquer doubt. However, if we see the problem of doubt as a lack in faith, we will forever attempt to pump up our faith instead of using it to defeat doubt. Think about it: If faith is a gift from God as Paul tells us (Ephesians 2:8), then how can we assume that it is faith that is weak. It is not the faith that is weak; it is our confidence in faith that is weak.

The best examples of how to live as Christians should come from our Lord. His faith is never clearer, other than the manner in which He lived every day of his life, than in his preparation for experiencing death. What is faith other than a submission of the human will unto God’s will? By submitting ourselves to God no matter the consequences and the uncertainty is to typify fully faith in Him. As Jesus prepared for death, He poured himself out before the Father. The manner in which God in Christ and God in the Father interact in the garden is beyond our comprehension. However, part of our Trinitarian belief tells us that the Godhead is in communion with Himself. The three parts of God interact in complete harmony, but, nonetheless, interact. We also confess that Christ was fully human yet fully divine. Here again, we lack full understanding, but we take this tenet by faith. As Christ struggles in the garden, we see His humanity so that we might relate. Christ calls out to God the Father and lets it be known that He is afraid of what is to come and does not wish to face this horrible death. Often, when another human has a similar experience, many Christians deem this a flaw. They ask, in effect, why anyone would tell God that he or she does not wish to follow the path He has set. However, we are told that Christ, in full honesty before the Father, admitted reservations. Although His humanity resists the unknown consequences of death, He submits Himself to the Father’s will, for, by faith of the spirit, He knows He will be victorious (Mark 14:36). The narrative of Christ’s death continues, and as He hangs upon the cross, He cries out to God: “At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?," which is translated, "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?" (Mark 15:34).

Here we come to a passage that the Church, at times, has struggled with, yet when considered carefully, it lends great comfort to many who suffer a sense of abandonment from God. As I study numerous commentaries, I find numerous explanations. I even find that some within the church prefer to ignore this verse. When I study this passage in Mark, I find that Mark does not offer much explanation. Thus, the reader must contemplate the passage, in which Christ quotes Psalm 22:1. Although this may seem a strange way of doing so, Christ is speaking to His father and acknowledging a final victory, even while he feels abandonment. However, it is a victory that He takes by faith because experientially, Christ does not feel God’s presence. At this moment, Christ feels completely abandoned by God. I imagine that the correct theology is that which maintains that Christ felt abandoned because He was assuming the full force of humanity’s sin; hence, God the Father had, for a time, to break His communion with God the Son. However, the important point to realize is that Christ, suffering greatly for us, did feel a separation from God in some manner, a sense of abandonment He had never experienced before. I cannot begin to imagine what sort of emotion and fear He had to endure at this moment.

(If you have not already done so, this would be a good time to read Psalm 22.)

Now, let me explain why I see this cry from the cross as a cry of victory. Although Christ, for the first time in His entire life, felt abandoned by God, the scripture He chooses to recite is one of ultimate victory. Many scholars would suggest that we should not be so quick in allowing the entirety of Psalm 22 to inform our understanding of why Christ said what He did because it diminishes the suffering of the Messiah. I respectfully say that this takes nothing away from His suffering. Christ’s intention has to be seen here. A famous commentator once said that if Jesus’ intention was to admit a full sense of despair without hope, He could have quoted a number of passages that demonstrate abandonment but do not end in final victory, yet this passage is the one He uttered in His final moments. Jesus did not, at this point, quote the portion of the Psalm that explicitly demonstrates final victory. Instead, He voiced the part that demonstrated exactly what He was feeling at that moment. Thus, we do understand that He is indeed suffering greatly, both physically and emotionally, and this is why I see these words as a cry of victory to which we, as humans, can relate. Christ seems to be saying that He does, in fact, feel abandoned for the moment, but He also, by faith, is suggesting that what is to come is the final victory of the Lord. It may seem peculiar to say that Christ felt abandoned by God; however, this is what the Bible says. Despite feeling completely torn from the Father, Christ believes God is still going to have victory. In fact, many of Christ’s sayings from the cross that appear in other gospels demonstrate more clearly His sense of victory. And as we read the rest of the gospel, we see that Christ’s faith was indeed valid, for He rose from the grave. We, too, should feel permitted to cry out to God and admit our fear and sense of abandonment. Then, our hearts will testify that He is in complete control and will have final victory in our lives. In the face of the unknown, faith can be damaged by our lack of understanding in its power. In truth, it is not doubt that should destroy faith. Faith is our strength to overcome the barrier of uncertainty and doubt.

This is the path that I am on, and a path that many have taken before me. The path of faith is better understood by a reversal in our thinking. We must allow our hearts to inform our minds. We must learn to give the heart’s faith knowledge the chance to overcome the head’s limited experiential knowledge. Pray that God would strengthen your faith and allow it to take the lead of your life.