When a person gives their life to Jesus, that person will be changed, never wanting to go back to their old sinful ways.
I wish it were that easy and simple. It never was for me. I became aware of some things—literally overnight—and some behaviors changed immediately. But through no fault of my own, others hung around for a lifetime.
Being a good Baptist, I learned how to thrive on the condemnation routinely spewed like raw sewage from the pulpit. I doubted my salvation; I prayed the sinner’s prayer weekly, if not daily, and confessed the same sins over and over, but nothing changed. So, I embraced the sewage and self-condemnation, figuring this was what I needed to keep me straight.
At some point in my journey, I had begun to learn Father’s voice—thanks be to God because the Baptists I hung out with couldn’t teach that if their lives depended upon it—when during one of my groveling confession sessions, Father spoke so clearly that had it been any louder, I would have heard Him with my ears, bellowing in the room: “Never confess those sins to me again. Don’t bring it to me if you don’t remember when it happened or remember doing it.”
For you see, I knew—as aptly taught—that I was just a worm, a sinner saved by grace, so it didn’t really matter what sin I confessed because, at some point, I’d certainly done it in some fashion. Hence, repeat, ad nauseam.
After that encounter, I didn’t pray again for two weeks because I had nothing else to say or talk about.
That was probably the turning point in my learning who I am in Christ.
It has been suggested that the definition of faith is believing in something without proof or evidence to substantiate said thing: a typical Evangelical Christian definition based chiefly on a verse found somewhere in the book of Hebrews (chapter 11, verse 1, to be precise).
However, I would suggest that there’s not only archeological evidence but also other tangible evidence that God is and keeps His word—the Bible, right?
After all, some say that today, God only speaks to us through the Bible.
So then, how is the Bible used, and what does it have to do with blind faith?
We use it as a historical record illustrating that God is trustworthy and His nature is Good. By any definition of the word, the Bible becomes our record of evidence of His existence and nature. But therein is the rub.
Using their definition, that faith must be blind, that faith must not rely on tangible evidence, then believing in and trusting God solely based on what one has read in the Bible does not constitute an application of faith, because – according to them – the very essence of faith must transcend the need for empirical validation resting instead on a profound sense of trust and conviction that is literally based upon nothing:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
What we see, then, is that these people try to define faith as empty and convince you that faith is blind. They take Hebrews 11:1 out of context and propose a new, seemingly better definition.
However, in adhering to their wishes and using their own definitions, we discover their blindness to the very nature of their origins.
What do they possess, then? Nothing more than a commitment to a logical conclusion drawn from historical evidence found in both the Bible and extrabiblical sources – because their faith must be blind and based upon no observable evidence at all.
Really Understanding Faith
While our reference to the text of the Book of Hebrews is correct, and the words found therein are true, we must move beyond blind, unsubstantiated faith. Perhaps a further reading of the text will bring elucidation:
For by it {faith} the people of old received their commendation.
By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.
And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
In all of the examples provided, each one is backed up by tangible evidence.
The Word of God was spoken throughout history so that those from Adam and beyond knew from whence they came, this being the evidence of testimony.
How did Able know what to bring as an offering? Not through the Bible, but by having a living conversation with God – trusting and believing His testimony.
Enoch believed and trusted God that he would not see death but be taken up instead. He had reason to believe and trust God’s word.
Noah acted on God’s tangible word after being warned and instructed.
A Better Understanding of Faith
In any court, testimony is considered evidence. Even so, without trust there can be no faith.
Suppose you want to hire Yardman to mow your grass, as you have an acre of grass to maintain. To that end, you interview a few people.
The first person arrives with scissors and promises to show up on time every week. He asserts that he will cut your grass with his scissors and be done in about an hour. The second person you interview arrives with useful lawn equipment that seems to be seldom used. Your neighbors have warned you that he’s unreliable and may not show up but only once a month, if that. The third person arrives looking tattered, hot, and with grass clippings stuck in his hair. He provides, like the others, a fair price for the job.
Which one do you hire, and why?
You avoid Scissor Man because you don’t believe he can do the job.
You avoid Seldom Man because you don’t trust him to do the job.
You hire Tattered and Dirty Man because you believe he can do the job and trust that he will keep his word.
So, you hired the Tattered and Diry Man, because why? Because of the faith generated by the evidence provided.
The Scientific Method
Whether supernatural or natural, faith is always based on the evidence provided. It is generated and grows by believing the evidence and trusting its Maker. As such, the Scientific Method is the best example of our generation of natural faith.
Something is observed, and a curiosity is formed along with an idea of why the thing is. Tests are devised and investigated for their applicability and trustworthiness. The tests are performed, and the results are evaluated as conforming to the qualifications previously devised. Once the results are confirmed, we let someone else run the same experiments. The more times they’re run, the more times they show the same results, the more our belief in the original hypothesis and theories increase, along with the trust in the validity of the devised tests. All because of trust placed into the original systems of belief and the qualities of trustworthiness of the tests performed.
We have faith because we know the One who speaks, and we believe because we have found Him to be Trustworthy.
Thus, faith is never blind, regardless of how often someone removes Hebrews 11:1 from its context.
So, the next time someone tells you that faith is blind, ask them if they believe the Bible provides evidence of a Creator, Moral Giver, and Judge. If they assert that as true, then remind them they have simply believed a logical construct, seeing that their faith must, by their definition, be blind.
– I believed she was kind and respectful. – I believed she honored and loved me. – I believed she would do anything for me.
But now, I no longer believe in my spouse.
Today, I know her. I’ve moved beyond belief and into an experiential relationship. I know our relationship is one of kindness, honor, love, respect, and self-sacrifice toward one another. We have a root of relationship that transcends belief. I know my wife.
How many of us still believe in our spouse in the same way when we first met?
If that seems at least somewhat preposterous, then that’s how I feel when I see some people say, “I believe in God.”
There’s a time and a place for that position. But not after you’ve been walking with Him for many years.
If you’ve subjugated yourself to the authority of a pastor who suggests you must maintain your belief or your belief and faith are one and the same, then it’s time to move on to solid food.
It’s time to explore what a relationship with your savior actually looks like.
Hate is not an emotional response of disgust or simply disliking or loathing. It is the opposite of love, where love is defined as building something up and creating value in something or someone else. God so loved that He gave Life. And in giving Life, He destroyed (hated) the effects of sin.
Hate, then, is the action of destruction. While destruction often carries the notion of dislike and disapproval, the authentic action of hatred destroys that to which it is leveraged.
The Protestant churches I attended did a mediocre job of teaching that guilt of sin was transferred to the cross.
But they all excelled at keeping people in bondage to shame.
My therapist helped me work through shame by helping me understand that guilt is understanding that “I’ve done something wrong,” and shame is “I am badly made” or “I am wrongful in who I am,” either through my actions or the actions of others against me.
Guilt carries remorse, but shame carries anger and disgust against oneself or another.
Given the context of my therapy, I had a few problems with guilt, but boy, howdy, did I ever feel shame. Once I learned and accepted that I had done nothing wrong (no guilt), I then had to learn that I was not bad (or wrong), nor was I the cause of what happened to me because of who I am (or was).
I did not ask for, condone, or do anything to deserve my assault, and it was wrong for me to carry anger and disgust against myself resulting from that action against me.
We have a Savior that eliminates guilt – but perhaps does not remove you from the earthly consequences thereof. Shame, however, has no place in our lives: our Savior removes all of it.
In the opinion of the Religious, in what ways am I judged and responsible for my sins?
To My Wife:
Thank you for standing by me through the years, and through these struggles.
Thank you for encouraging me.
Thank you for lifting me up in prayer to our Heavenly Father.
What I most resent about my Baptist upbringing is the rigid legalism ingrained in me, serving as a constant yardstick against which I measured my worth.
Throughout my life, I operated under the belief that an angry —or, at the very least, discontented—God was judging me for not meeting His divine standards. The teachings of Sam Cathy resonated in my soul strongly:
If you skip church, God will not forgive you.
When you willfully sin, there is no sacrifice.
After we’re born again, God does not separate our sins from us as far as the East is from the West.
I dreaded facing the Judgment Seat of Christ, knowing that God would list all my moral and spiritual failings, showcasing them as the wood, hay, and stubble that evidenced my inherent unworthiness. Surely the gold, silver, and precious stones could only be reserved for those who did God’s work, those in the ministry – and perhaps a few special others.
I always assumed that my few accomplishments would ultimately be negated; after all, how could someone as inherently flawed as myself ever please God?
Yet, it was nothing short of infuriating and gut-wrenching when I realized that my so-called ‘sins’ were not simply the result of Adam’s original failing or my deliberate straying from the path. No, they were the ghastly outcomes of unresolved emotional and physical trauma that had silently guided my life, unbeknownst to me. The absolute atrocity of the unjust judgment and constant condemnation for elements of my life that were never in my control filled me with silent rage.
In other words, and in the opinion of the Sam Cathys of this world, in what ways am I judged and responsible for my sins, which were unwittingly guided, influenced, and directly seeded by the sins of others who, with malice and forethought, intentionally harmed me? For us, that’s a dark valley journey where only the fearless may walk and ponder1.
So here I am, the Recovering-Legalist, still recovering. I’m not as naive to believe that a world given to sin does not influence our decisions nor the spiritual death of our souls. But neither am I so naive as to think that my worldview, and consequently my broken belief systems that informed my actions, were purely my doing.
For I now understand that I had help. The people who assaulted me helped. The people who molested me helped. The Baptists who taught me legalism and condemnation helped. The Sam Cathys of religion, who taught me to earn the graciousness of God beyond the cross, helped.
I had help to get to where I found myself.
But today, I have found myself in the presence of the unwavering graciousness and mercy of God, who lifted me out of the pit of mirey clay.
Who, by the way, also raised someone else who found themselves in a very similar pit. A person to whom I will be eternally thankful. A person who helped me find, express, and heal the pain lingering in my soul.
You know who you are. Thank you.
Hebrews 4:12 (AMP) For the word of God is living and active and full of power [making it operative, energizing, and effective]. It is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating as far as the division of the soul and spirit [the completeness of a person], and of both joints and marrow [the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and judging the very thoughts and intentions of the heart. ↩︎
Trauma happens. But when it occurs in our formative years, 0-6, or 6-10, it can be especially damaging to our soul. In many cases, we will not remember the trauma until many years later. When the memories do return, we’re thrust into a period of self-reflection and self-discovery of a new person. But one of the most fearful things of all is learning new coping mechanisms that do not involve the ways we learned during the trauma, the way we approached the world for the entirety of our life.
When our brain blocks the memory of a traumatic event, we are spared the damage of something we’re not cognitively able to process. But that doesn’t mean we don’t remember: the memory is simply, for a while, hidden1.
Not only that, but as those events lurk under the surface of our consciousness, they play a significant role in building our worldviews and coping mechanisms. While those mechanisms do not accurately reflect reality, they help keep us safe from a certain point of view.
Healing
Trauma healing can be compared to the parable of plowing a field – but with a small exception: we MUST look backward for a time2. We must acknowledge that what happened was a sin against us and allow the pain to escape and move forward in time and space. When we bring it forward, we step into and through the manure of the bulls, pulling our plow and moving us forward in life under our guidance.
Similarly, we must recognize that the now unhidden pain is a personal sin against our soul, an insult against ourselves towards our ability to thrive and survive.
When we “confess our sins to one another3,” it is not about attributing blame or self-condemnation. It is not about presenting our misdeeds to God or others for reconciliation.
Instead, we seek a trustworthy individual prepared to lend an ear and assist us in navigating the anguish and tribulation that readily ensnares us. It takes a particular type of person possessing the right character to understand that repressed and hidden wounds need a voice, and sometimes, that voice is ugly.
Those who don’t leave your side during the process are your true friends. The others are either too bamboozled to comprehend what is happening or too broken to help. Or perhaps your current state is useless to them – so they don’t care for your failure to bring sunshine to their world.
Summary
Look back and remember. But recognize these things: it is a painful process; learning new non-trauma coping mechanisms is scary; be sure you have a trained professional to guide you through the process; make sure that person has used their techniques on themselves, that they’re not practicing from a place of non-experiential theory.
van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Publishing Group, 2014. Kindle. (FILLING IN THE HOLES: CREATING STRUCTURES > Page 302 · Location 5782) ↩︎
Go on through, go on through the gates, clear the way for the people! Build up a highway, build it up! Clear away the stones! Raise a banner for the peoples!
Isaiah 62:10 CJB
When we study the Bible and apply judgments as a King sitting at his gate (2 Samuel 18:1-4; 2 Samuel 19:1-8; Genesis 22:17) we do one of two things. Either we build walls of exclusivity, or we build pavements of access.
Walls of Religion
In this modality, we take the Word of God, puffing ourselves up in religion, and build a wall. We assert, saying, “This is what I believe; don’t come in unless you believe the same thing: don’t penetrate my wall.”
Bridges and Highways of Pavement
Otherwise, we take the Word of God and make it a useful pavement for highways and bridges so that others can come to experience what we have seen and experienced ourselves.
Those of us who have or are in the process of healing trauma will reach a point wherein we must address that fractured bit of ourselves (created when we were so very young) to protect us from the assaults we suffered.
That alter ego served a vital purpose in our lives. It protected us from the emotional and psychological damage we would have otherwise suffered. It helped shape us, mold us into who we became, whether for good or for bad.
When that day comes, to say goodbye, we are then able to see the part our alter ego played, and continues to play, in shaping our outlook, our visions of others and ourselves, and the walls it has erected to keep us safe. Most importantly, we are able to see that perhaps it was a good design, after all.
But it is not the best design our Father God has for us. The best is yet to come. The best is the person we will become after our protective alter ego has said goodbye.
We cannot condemn our alter ego for the part it played in helping us become who we ultimately did not what want to be. We can’t look at our younger self and apply death, disdain, or condemnation. We can’t kill our alter ego.
Rather we must reform Dylan Thomas’ words, saying:
Do go gentle into that good night. Though you are old of age, sleep and rest at your close of day. Be at peace with the dying of the light.
Scripture teaches us that we are to die to self, but it also teaches us that there is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. Therefore, we are forbidden to condemn ourselves, and especially those parts of us God allowed to be created for the purpose of protecting our soul and spirit.
Give your fractured self a peaceful and respectful wake. Look forward to the renewing of the mind, the new creation that God has designed us to ever be evolving into.
This is Psalm 91 written in first person and present tense.
This is Psalm 91 written in first person and present tense.
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow Of the Almighty.
I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust!”
For it is He who delivers me from the snare of the trapper and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover me with His pinions, and under His wings, I seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.
I will not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day; or of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or of the destruction that lays waste at noon. A thousand may fall at my side and ten thousand at my right hand, but it shall not approach me. I will only look on with my eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. For I have made the Lord, my refuge, even the Most High, my dwelling place.
No evil will befall me, nor will any plague come near my tent. For He will give His angels charge concerning me, to guard me in all my ways. They will bear me up in their hands, that I do not strike my foot against a stone. I will tread upon the lion and cobra; the young lion and the serpent I will trample down.
“Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name. “He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. “With a long life I will satisfy him and let him see My salvation.”
A Recovering Legalist 