Faith in Faith
21 Jun 2008
The strength of faith is found in its object, not its amount. Jesus taught that mountains could be moved by faith in Him, even if that faith amounted to no more than a grain of mustard seed (Matthew 17:20). When it comes to faith, the least amount in the right object will suffice. On the other hand, all the faith in the world will prove futile if placed in the wrong thing.
Believing a glass of strychnine to be a smoothie makes it no less deadly to drink, no matter how much you believe the poison will prove nutritious. Likewise, stepping out on a frozen pond with bated breath will prove to be safe, as long as the pond is frozen solid. All that is required of you is enough faith to take the first step.
Today, thanks in large part to faith healing and prosperity preaching televangelists, the object of people’s faith is increasingly becoming faith itself. In other words, lots of folks today have faith in their faith. They believe that everything is possible to those who have enough faith, including never-ending health and ever-increasing wealth. As they are fond of putting it: “If you can believe, you can achieve.”
Belief in our ability to create our own reality with the power of our mind stems from occultism. It is occultists, not Christians, that believe spiritual forces and powers can be harnessed and manipulated into doing our bidding by the sheer force of our faith, power of our positive thinking or chanting of magical incantations. Unfortunately, thanks to faith healers like Benny Hinn, positive thinking gurus like Robert Schuller and positive confession champions like Kenneth Copeland, this occult teaching has crept into the contemporary church.
In the minds of many modern-day churchgoers, God is reduced to some kind of universal bellhop who is forced to do our bidding by the sheer power of our beliefs, thoughts and confessions. Rather than believing in the biblical God, whose sovereign plans and purposes are proceeding unimpeded by any power in heaven, on earth or under the earth, many modern-day churchgoers believe in a god that can be harnessed and manipulated into serving our plans and purposes rather than his own. All it takes to turn the divine potentate into a pawn to be used for our ends is for us to muster up enough faith or conjure up the right kind of thoughts and words.
If you ask me, the campaign theme of Barack Obama, “Change We Can Believe In,” sounds eerily familiar. It sounds like a page taken from today’s televangelists’ playbook. Mesmerized audiences all over the fruited plain are being led by Obama—the political equivalent of a prosperity preaching faith healer—to believe that change is possible if we’ll only believe. If we can only believe enough in change then everything will be changed by the sheer force of our faith in change.
Although both preach a message of faith in our faith, the message of Barack Obama is somewhat different from the message of today’s televangelists. Whereas televangelists tout exorbitant faith in God as a means to our ends, Barack Obama touts exorbitant faith in ourselves and in him as a cure-all for our nation’s various ills.
According to Obama, our faith will enable him to provide healthcare for all of the sick and good jobs for all of the jobless. In addition, if we can muster up enough faith, Obama vows he’ll be able to slow the rise of the oceans, lower the earth’s temperature and heal our planet. And I thought that Jesus alone could command “the wind and the sea” (Mark 4:41). Little did I know that modern-day politicians could have these same divine powers imparted to them by the faith of the electorate.
Like today’s “anointed” televangelists, who never fault the failure of miracles to occur on their lack of miraculous powers, but on other people’s lack of faith, Barack Obama has shielded himself from ever being blamed for failing to deliver on his fantastic campaign promises. If his campaign for the presidency fails it won’t be his fault, but our fault for lacking the faith to elect him as our president. And if his presidency proves to be disastrous rather than miraculous that too will be our fault for failing to follow him as our president with blind faith. No matter what happens, Barack Obama, just like today’s televangelists, can keep claiming to be a miracle-worker, even if no verifiable miracles ever occur.
Don Walton
|
