Faith Sucks

We struggle to try to "do the right thing." We struggle to know God's will. We struggle to reconcile His will with our will, which often means bargaining for some time and fooling ourselves that it is ok to be faithful in fulfilling God's will on our own terms. Ultimately, we hope to eventually learn to carry our cross and be patient, waiting for God to work. This is hard, and it helps to vent to a friend from time to time and share the struggle.

I was commiserating about spiritual struggles over dinner with a friend on Thursday night, and there was a group of people talking next to us about religion and church attendance. We only overheard snippets of the conversations like "that's why I love the Lutherans because you can do whatever you want!" It seemed as though their conversation shared the same bit of our anxiety in managing the challenges of our Christian spiritual lives. Then we overheard one young lady at the table responded to all this with "I wouldn't know, I'm an atheist." This stopped me in my tracks with envy. My immediate reaction was "how fortunate you are." 

I wish I were an atheist. I wish I could deny God's existence. I wish I could escape the responsibility of being a witness for Christ. Clearly, faith is a laudable characteristic in the Judeo-Christian ethos (1 Sam 2:35, Rev. 3:14, I Cor 4:17, Col 4:7, II Tim 2:2, Matt 25:21) and we admire all the members of the hall of faith in Hebrews 11. However, there is not a single example of someone who did not suffer in some way for this faith, and in the short term their life would have been much easier to deny their faith. Jonah is a good example of someone who recognized the challenge of being faithful to God's will. His decision to go in the opposite direction of Nineveh was not just an act of defiance - it was based on a hope that God did not exist on the boat or in Tarshish. He wanted to be an atheist. The captain of the boat woke him up and reminded him that God exists and that his faith in God comes with a responsibility. 

Maybe I'm the only one. Maybe all the other Christians in the world are in perpetual honeymoon bliss with Our Lord, the Beloved. Maybe I need more faith. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I feel that way sometimes. When I feel my spiritual life is making demands I cannot meet, I do not naturally wish to have the faith of Abraham - I wish to have the faith of Jonah. I do not want to sacrifice Isaac, I want to run away and pretend God does not exist. This may not make any sense, but it doesn't have to make any sense as long as I end with #justsayin.