Faith

Yesterday a sister from my mission uploaded this picture of us when we were serving in Chile.  Seeing it took me back.  The sights, the sounds, I could almost taste the empanadas again.  But more than that, it brought back memories of what it felt like to be "Missionary Mark."

It's always interesting to have those moments of flashback; to repossess, if for only one moment, the person that you used to be.  This particular flashback reminded me of the kind of faith that I had back then.  It was a very simple one.  I believed whole-heartedly that if a person just does what they are supposed to do, that their life will be blessed and that God will always make things work out for them.  That belief defined me.  It's the kind of faith that I lived every day and the faith that I preached to the people of Chile.

In many ways, I look back with admiration and nostalgia at the simple beauty of that belief.  There's a part of me that wishes I could go back to it.  However, I can also see that that belief was dangerous in its naivety, for when a time came when things didn't go right in my life, when great challenges arose and I felt like my life was falling apart, I didn't have an answer to that inevitable question of "why is this happening to me?"  Months later, while sifting through the wreckage, I fixed upon the only answer that made any sense: "It's all a sham.  God doesn't love me.  He doesn't care."  My answer was anger.

Thankfully, that time has also past, and I've since come to learn some important things about faith and about life, and it's this: the power of faith doesn't reside in our ability to "force" blessings out of God through our belief in or obedience to Him.  Nor does it do anything to shield us from the challenges of this life.  We all have agency, and consequently, we are all, daily, victims of each other's agency.  That fact alone guarantees that God cannot simply make everything work for those that follow Him.  No matter how good you are, bad things can and will happen to you.  Believing otherwise is not faith, it's naivety.

So what is faith? Some people say that faith is believing that "everything happens for a reason." To me, that still doesn't sound right.  That makes it sound like God wanted you to get cancer, or for your marriage to fall apart.  Rather, I think that purpose, or meaning, can be found in everything that happens, and that God is there to help us find it.  To me, faith is believing that through God everything can be made for our benefit; that, though He can't protect us from getting hurt, He is there to help heal us.  God can't step in the way of our, or anyone else's agency, but He can help us to learn and to grow from that which has happened.

That's the faith that keeps me going now.  And though I still sometimes miss the way I used to see the world, before the storm hit, I'm glad that God has lifted me out of the waves and put me on more solid ground.