lenten blog | February 16, 2024

Faith vs. Fantasy

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for February 16th:  Psalm 25:1-10; Daniel 9:15-25a; and 2 Timothy 4:1-5.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

We live in a world where a large number of people choose to accept preposterous notions.  They choose to believe in absurd conspiracies because it’s easier than dealing with the reality they reject.  Religion needs to be cautious of this same credulity because we place our faith in unprovable truths.  So how does religion distinguish itself from self-serving fantasies?  I can’t speak for all faiths since I know too little about them, but we have Jesus. 

Marcus Borg teaches that one of the defining characteristics of Christianity is that we base our faith primarily in a person.  Moses and Mohammad are receivers of revelation.  The Buddha discloses a path to enlightenment, “[b]ut Christianity finds the primary revelation of God in a person.  This does not make Christianity superior, but does make it different.” (The Heart of Christianity, p. 80) 

Karl Barth was a Reformed Church pastor and theologian.  He was a proponent of the Social Justice Movement, which professed that church should make a difference in this world and not merely preach about the next.  It should make people’s lives better rather than console them with promises of eternal reward.  In 1911, he was invited to address a Socialist political gathering.  He knew that many in the audience were not people of faith, and to them he said, “What Jesus has to bring to us are not ideas, but a way of life.”  Even for those who did not believe in Jesus’ divinity, Jesus’ example was convincing.

Jesus of Nazareth is our grounding.  His lived revelation protects our faith from flights of fantasy.  God comes to us as us in Jesus and shows us who God is and who we should be.  Faith is not limited to breathless chants of “Jesus is Lord.”  Faith in Jesus as Lord inspires believers to live like Jesus.  If the chants are matched with acts of violence, prejudice, inhumanity and/or greed, then they may be meaningless. 

As Christians our fundamental revelation is the life of Jesus.  The unknown author of 2 Timothy has warned us for 2,000 years to be careful that faith is not led astray by our own desires so that we wander off after myths and conspiracies.  We need, says 2 Timothy, to “do the work of an evangelist.”  To do the work – that is to continue the good and loving work of Jesus of Nazareth.  The work will prove the authenticity of our evangelism. 

This is the practical grounding of our faith, and Lent is the sacred season when we have the chance to know Jesus better, to read and study His story in the Bible, to pray and worship and engage with the still-speaking-Word, and to serve and sacrifice in the name of the one who lived His gospel so uncompromisingly that He accepted death as His last lived proclamation.  When we “do the work of an evangelist,” when we strive to live like Jesus lived, then in a sense we have proof for the unprovable truth we believe.
​
If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.