How Faith Grows
"When He has tested me, I will come forth as gold."
— Job
Faith can grow during the time when we must suffer and ask "Why?" None of us would choose to suffer in order to grow in faith. Just the opposite. Our natural instinct is to avoid pain and shy away from suffering. Even if we were given the choice between suffering and health at the expense of a growing faith, we would choose health. Why not? Church history is replete with people who pursued suffering as the path to spirituality. Seekers of suffering range all the way from "flagellantes" in the Philippines who beat themselves with whips to other Filipinos who turn Good Friday into a media event by having themselves crucified — though not usually to the point of death — to "hypochondriacs" in the United States who manipulate their physical ills to spiritual advantage. Regardless of the extreme, those who seek suffering end up scarred but no more saintly than those who pursue health with equal vigor.
Still, we cannot deny the growing faith of those who suffer. Television brings us story after story of people who are victims of deadly diseases, crippling accidents, and vicious crimes. Almost without exception, those who suffer find resources within themselves not just to bear their suffering but faith to encourage others. This morning's paper carries the story of a football coach who has the incurable
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Lou Gehrig's disease which attacks the nervous system. Even though his prognosis is grim, the coach is on the field with his team, one arm dangling helplessly at his side, the other in a sling. His voice is reduced to a whisper so that the players have to strain their ears to hear his command, "O.K. Let's be happy and go hard." Inspired by his courage, team members say, "When he talks, everybody listens."
Who has not been inspired and shamed by similar stories of suffering people? Our first reaction is that we do not see how they can face such circumstances. Then we see them smile and speak of a sustaining faith that we have never known. Envy almost takes over. We breathe a silent prayer that our faith might be as strong. Yet we know deep within ourselves that such faith will not come without the est of suffering.
Job mirrors the image of our lives. Like him, we cruise through life taking health and prosperity for granted until suffering takes us by surprise. In a moment of time, our faith is put to the test. After exhausting ourselves crying "Why?", desperation causes us to reach for resources upon which we have never drawn and about which we have never known.
Suffering presses our faith in God to its outer limits — and beyond. When our suffering is total and our current faith is inadequate, the only alternative is to grow in faith or lapse back into futility. Job's suffering put him in this position He did not make a conscious or courageous choice to suffer in order to grow in faith. In fact, it was all he could do to hang on to the faith he had. Yet, his doggedness put him on the growth line toward a maturing faith. The process is painful but infinitely worthwhile.
Faith Grows on Faith
Each of us brings to suffering the faith that we already have. It is false to assume that a person without faith in God will suddenly come to faith through suffering. Faith may come, but it will be most elementary. Likewise it is false to assume that suffering will spontaneously produce a spurt of mature faith in a spiritual neophyte. Faith may grow but it
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will be a step at a time. I learned this lesson as a chaplain in a hospital. Answering a call for ministry, I visited a diabetic who had just had one foot amputated. As I approached his bed, I saw the other foot outside the bed sheets so that an open, running sore could be exposed to the air. Gangrene, which had caused one foot to be amputated, threatened the other as well. His doctors had asked if I would help them convince the patient to follow the hygienic precautions which he had ignored. Otherwise, his foot and his life were in jeopardy.
I intended to ease into the conversation, but the patient charged at me with a declaration of his faith. A year earlier he told me, he had traveled over 500 miles to the rivival meeting of a faith healer who touched him and pronounced him healed of his diabetes. Even though the patient was not a professing Christian, he put his faith in the healer and stopped following his doctor's orders for medication and cleanliness. Thus, he lost one foot and endangered the other.
After I had gained his confidence by daily visits and listening, I discreetly asked if he sensed any contradiction between his faith in the healer and his loss of a foot. With firm resolution, he answered, "No. I would travel 500 miles to be touched by him again." The lesson is sad, but true. Through the desperation of suffering, a man without faith in God put his trust in a faith healer who supposedly represented God. The nature of his faith, however, was so elementary that it was unrealistic. His faith was a fantasy that eventually cost him both feet and ultimately, his life.
The faith a person brings to suffering determines how faith can grow through that suffering. In his book, The Stages of Faith Development, James Fowler identifies six levels of faith through which we can grow a step at a time.
I. Intuitive-Projective Faith — a child's faith based upon fantasy and imagination.
II. Mythical-Literal Faith — early childhood/family faith based upon moral rules and either-or thinking.
III. Synthetic-Conventional Faith — adolescent faith based upon the tradition of the community and imitation of faith models.
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IV. Individuative-Reflective Faith — young adult faith based upon critical, reflective, and independent thinking.
V. Conjunctive Faith — a midlife and old-age faith based upon the integration of self-identity with a comprehensive world view which leads to serving and being served.
VI. Universalizing Faith — a rare faith based upon a transcendent vision which leads to a disciplined, active and self-giving life.1
Each of us can find the level of faith that is foundational for our life. If we are honest, we will even admit fluctuation between the levels of faith from time to time. In some circumstances, the maturity of our faith astounds us as we give ourselves in unselfish service to others. In other circumstances, we are shamed by the low level of our faith as we regress to fantasy and imagination. What makes the difference? Most likely it is the extent to which the circumstances threaten us. I, for instance, can exercise universalizing or self-giving faith when I envision the future of the seminary I serve. Yet for my own career, I keep falling back to the lowest level of faith, indulging in fantasy and barely able to trust God.
Job teaches us that suffering forces us to locate the foundational level of our faith. As we noted earlier, the Wisdom School which Job and his friends represented claimed a faith based upon critical thinking and reflective reasoning. In truth, however, they had reduced faith to a formula based upon the either-or equation:
Sin equals suffering;
Righteousness equals prosperity.
Around this formula, then, they developed a religious system that relied upon intuition, tradition, and imitation for support. Again, we see that Job and his friends are not people of little faith. In their search for God, they had progressed to the reflective level of faith — fashioned out of sound reasoning and applied in practical righteousness.
Job illustrates how Reflective Faith sustained him during the calamities that wiped out his fortune, fame and family. With chilling logic, he responds:
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The Lord gives, the Lord takes away,
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
His Reflective Faith was equal to the test. I, however, have confessed that I would have a hard time being so glib about the loss of my meager fortune and magnificent family. Maybe I am revealing that I have a lower level of faith which cannot handle such tragedy. Or perhaps I am revealing that the level of my faith has not been tested by such circumstances. Still, as I reach down, down, down to the bedrock of my trust in God, I feel as if I would be able to discover resources of faith upon which I have never drawn before. If so, my faith would grow under test.
This was the case with Job. When Satan attacked him personally, took away his health, and subjected him to total suffering, certain questions emerged. Would Job grow in faith to the Conjunctive Level where faith becomes larger than the sum of its parts? Or would Job attain the Universalizing Level of faith that permits him to see through to God and give himself away in selfless service?
Faith Grows through Struggle
Faith does not grow on a smooth path along a straight line. Anyone who thinks that the walk of faith is an idyllic journey has never been tested by intense suffering. A better picture for the walk of faith is given to us by Elliott Wright in his book, The Holy Company. Tracing the biographies of eighty persons whom history has identified as "saints," Elliott discovers that they are a diverse company of peculiar people with only one thing in common. Each has an insatiable thirst for God which keeps them "hobbling" toward holiness.2
In recent days, I have developed my own visual image for the test of faith. God seems to have put me on a "yo-yo" of highs and lows that are both spiritually confusing and emotionally exhausting. On successive days, He has taken me from the exhilarating high of a multi-million-dollar endowment for the seminary to the humiliating low of what I interpreted as a personal repudiation by a friend. One day later, my ego got a stratospheric boost when my name flashed
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across the television screen as a potential presidential candidate on a CBS news special hosted by Walter Cronkite. Within twenty-four hours, however, I sank back into self-doubt when my name was omitted from a long and obvious list of evangelical Christian leaders.
More than once during a week when I rode up and down on a yo-yo string, I asked God, "Why?" and "What are You doing to me?" The answer came back, "Trust Me." So, exercising rare patience, I have tried to hold steady and learn what God is trying to teach me.
Patience pays off. At the bottom of the yo-yo string, I see His promise to take me through new and changing circumstances; at the top, I envision His promise for a bright and challenging future. I still don't like the highs and lows of riding on a yo-yo string, but I must confess that my faith has been extended to new dimensions of spiritual insight which I have never encountered before.
Faith Grows by Steps
Job rode the yo-yo too. We tend to emphasize either his "ups" of faith or his "downs" of suffering. A careful reading of the story with a particular sensitivity to the highs and lows of his experience in suffering will show us the connection between the two.
On the low side of Job's suffering, we see him sinking lower and lower into despair until his cries of anguish turn bitter and border on blasphemy. His own words take us down, down, down into the depths of despair with him:
NO HOPE IN LIFE: "Why did I not die at birth?" (3:11)
NO HOPE IN SELF: "How can a man be righteous before God?" (9:2)
NO HOPE IN FRIENDS: "Will you contend for God?" (13:8)
NO HOPE IN DEATH: "If a man dies, shall he live again?" (14:4)
NO HOPE IN GOD: "How long will You torment my soul?" (19:2)
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Teenagers describe the times when they are down as being in "the pits." Few of us, however, ever fathom the depth of the pit into which Job sank. At most we may give up on life, ourselves, and our friends. But still, we hold our hope in life after death and in the mercy of God.
Job does not give up. He keeps asking questions with the hope of some answer that will lift him up from despair. Remember that he lived in a time before God had revealed the concept of eternal life to people of faith. So, Job juggles fatalism with faith in his question, "If a man dies, shall he live again?" Hoping against hope, he must have had some premonition that death is not the end. For instance, God seems to be a silent adversary tearing at his body, mind, and soul. Still Job asks, "How long will you torment my soul . . . ?" In his question is the untested assumption that sooner or later God will lift His hand and save His servant's soul.
As difficult as it may seem for a suffering person who is sinking lower and lower into the pit of despair, God still says, "Trust Me." People who have not established an earlier trust relationship with God will find it especially hard to keep their faith while sinking. Yet, even a smidgen of trust can be strengthened by the grace that God promises for our times of testing.
Up to the Pinnacle
Job's experience on the high side of faith proves the point. As you read his long and labored complaints against God, the sense of futility seems overwhelming. But then, each time he hits a new low, faith takes hold in a flash of prophetic insight which comes to him through the Spirit of God. Follow the rising action as Job sees beyond his time through faith:
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Hope in the Christ of God
"I know that my Redeemer lives . . ." (19:25)
Hope in the Life of God
"If a man dies, shall he live again?" (14:14)
Hope in the Friendship of God
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." (13:15)
Hope in the Mercy of God
"Your hands have made me and fashioned me, An intricate unity; Yet You would destroy me." (10:8)
Hope in the Justice of God
"God is wise in heart and mighty in strength." (9:4)
In this image of rising action, we see faith growing toward maturity through the struggle of suffering. Like mountain peaks projecting out of the fog which covers the valleys below, Job's breakthroughs of faith rise higher and higher until he stands on the pinnacle of faith and makes the prophetic declaration:
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
And He shall stand at last on the earth;
And after my skin is destroyed, this I know,
That in my flesh I shall see God.
(Job 19:25-26)
This lofty declaration of faith is the turning point in the Book of Job. From now on, Job takes the initiative in the debate with his friends. And even though he lapses back into despair from time to time, the sinking ceases and the tenor of his talk takes on a strength that permits him to focus on the issue of his innocence rather than upon personal attacks against either his friends or God.
Faith grows like that. In our struggle with deepening despair caused by suffering, the Spirit of God breaks through with flashes of spiritual insight that become more profound as we hold our trust in God. Yet we must remember that Job did not rise to the pinnacle of faith without those moments of floundering in the pit of futility. Therefore, the
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picture of a growing faith is like a musical crescendo in which the falling line of futility is matched by the rising line of faith until the grand note of faith is sounded to set the tone for the music to follow. In graphic portrayal, we see the crescendo of Job's growing faith:
Falling Line of Futility versus Rising Line of Faith
No Hope in God versus Faith in God's Christ
No Hope in Death versus Faith in God's Life
No Hope in Friends versus Faith in God's Friendship
No Hope in Self versus Faith in God's Mercy
No Hope in Life versus Faith in God's Justice
When all is said and done, Job's hope is our hope. From the pinnacle of faith, he foresees the Atonement of Christ our Redeemer, the Incarnation of Christ who became flesh and lived among us, and the Resurrection of Christ who gives us our only hope for eternal life. Think of it. Job, the man who lived before the time of the Law or the Prophets, affirms his faith in the promises of God which are yet to be revealed! By holding to his trust through the struggle of his suffering, Job came to see God's view of the final Revelation on which he can rest his hope.
Suffering people shame us with their prophetic insights into the future that God has for us. One of my dearest friends lay dying of cancer. In his long and lonely hours of insufferable pain, I expected to find him severely depressed. Instead, he said to me on my last visit before his death, "I'm so glad that I lived my life in the world of ideas. Not even cancer can take that away from me." As you would expect, his mind came more and more alive as his body died. Family and friends hung on his every word, not just because it might be his last word, but because his spiritual and intellectual insights were never so profound. Despite the depth of his suffering, he was seeing from the pinnacle of faith!
Our faith grows the same way. Out of our greatest struggles with the contradictions of human existence, faith makes its greatest gains.. Faith grows on faith; faith grows out of struggle; faith grows a step at a time.
The Pit and the Pinnacle
Jesus also experienced the growth of faith through suffering. Like Job and us, His life appears to be a bundle of contradictions — God and Man, Divine and Human, Sufferer and Savior, Servant and King, Glory and Shame, Death and Resurrection. Although He frequently cried out to His disciples, "O you of little faith," and repudiated the Pharisees for their pretensions of faith, He Himself went through the struggle of faith in preparation for His death on the cross. Alone, He stood on the highest pinnacle of faith when He trusted God to bring Him through the suffering of death and hell into resurrection of the body with the assurance of eternal life.
In Christ we see the potential of our faith. From the pit of hell, He arose with the shout, "Behold, I am alive, now and evermore." In that supreme moment of divine and human history, Jesus Christ shows us the meaning of a faith in which a transcendent vision is enacted in a self-giving Person. As rare as it may be, we too can rise to the pinnacle of faith. Suffering may be the cost, but the witness of such faith is eternally worthwhile.
