The Word
“For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”
1 John 5:4
The Thought
I read it several years ago in The Screwtape Letters and I just can't seem to get it out of my head: "Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man..."
Faith a means.
Three powerful words. Riddled with conviction and truth. Over and over again the melody repeats the refrain, faith a means. The diabolical battle is won when the believer succumbs to a Christianity of means.
I wonder sometimes if I have a faith of means.
Do I use my faith to gratify my secret desires of worldliness? To make a name for myself? To advance a particular cause? Why do I pray and read the Scriptures? Is it for the pure delight of knowing Christ and wanting to draw into deeper intimacy with him? Or, is it to reach the next plateau of a worldly end I am pursuing?
Is our faith a means to get something else? Maybe a better job, a bigger house, a brighter promotion.
"We do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, says Screwtape to Wormwood (his pupil) in The Screwtape Letters.
But a faith of means is really a corrupted faith. The etymology of corrupt comes from two Latin words: "cor" which means altogether, and "rumpere" which means to break. It carries the weight of destruction with its synomyn "destroy". It's a slow marring, spoiling of the faith that in the end ultimately destroys it.
Soren Kierkegaard stated it this way,
"Neither the eternal nor the Holy Scriptures have ever taught any man to strive to go far or farthest of all in the world; on the contrary, they warn against getting on too far in the world, in order, if possible, to keep oneself unspotted from the world."
Unspotted. Without blemish. No corruption.
Sometimes it's a slow erosion. A fissure in the surface that lets a tiny chism of corruption to seep in. But eventually the surface cracks, the yeast gets moldy, the stone breaks. Even water can erode a stone with years of constant streaming.
The world can seep its talons into us before we know it. Our petitionary prayers sound more like our children's Christmas list than a child seeking the kingdom of her father.
We are all becoming either eternal wonders or eternal horrors, Lewis stated in his famous address "The Weight of Glory." A faith of means is the horror of a corrupted faith.
"The Christian conception of self-renunciation is this: give up your selfish desires and longings, give up your arbitrary plans and purposes so that you in truth work disinterestedly for the good--and submit to being abominated almost as a criminal, scorned and ridiculed for this very reason," Kierkegaard urged years ago.
A life lived disinterestedly for the good lends itself to scorn, offense, and even martyrdom. It's a faith lived not as a means but as an end. It's the faith of the cross.
Because truth be told, God is not in the business of being a God of convenience. He's not interested in a faith that is concerned about what one will receive in this world. God is after a faith that sees the Cross as the end, and faith the means.
May our faith be a faith of the cross riddled with self-renunciation. May our eternal lover enthral our souls more than any earthly advancement. May we be eternal wonders where our faith brings us to the glory of a kingdom not of this world.
The Mending
Spend sometime today contemplating how you may have used your faith as a means to get something else. Ask yourself the following questions:
Has there been a slow marring, spoiling of my faith?
How has the world enticed my heart?
What do I think about Kierkegaard’s description of self-renunciation?
Am I most concerned about what I will receive in this world?
If I had to use one word to describe my faith, what would it be?