5. ‘I believe’: stepping into the ‘big picture’
‘I believe’. To some, these opening words of the creeds sound flat and weak. Yet there is a hidden strength in them, for these words declare that we have found an answer to life’s deepest questions. We have discovered a place of refuge, a safe anchorage for the soul and a firm place on which to stand. Martin Luther (1486–1543) pointed out that everyone needs to base their lives on something or someone. ‘Your god is whatever you have set your heart upon, the one in whom you trust.’
Luther suggested that faith is like a boat that you believe can take you from an island to the shore, even in rough seas. But do you have sufficient confidence to get in and set sail? Faith is about both trust and entrustment.
Knowing whom and what we can rely on is of enormous importance. Back in the days when I was a science research student a fellow student needed to get to Heathrow airport to catch an early morning flight for a job interview in Zurich. I asked him how he planned to make sure he was there in time. He smiled. He would be driven by a close friend who had promised to pick him up at four o’clock the following morning for the hour-long drive. I was surprised at this, as the person concerned had a well-earned reputation for being totally unreliable. But maybe, I thought to myself, I had misjudged things.
I met my friend a few days later and asked him how the interview went. He was crestfallen. He had never made it to Zurich. In fact, he had never even made it to the airport. The person who had promised to drive him there had completely forgotten and failed to turn up. (The interview was later rearranged, but my friend didn’t get the job.)
We learn, often the hard way, that some people are trustworthy and reliable and others are not. Time and time again, we read of people entrusting their life savings to ‘experts’ who promise to make them rich quickly. A month later, their savings – and the ‘experts’ – have disappeared. You may feel that it is a good and Christian thing to place confidence in others – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to prove worthy of our trust.
Faith, trust and security
The creeds tell us whom we may trust and where we may find security. More than that, they reassure us that countless people in the past have found them a tried and tested way of summing up the essentials of faith. Others have unlocked the door of the mystery of life and handed down to us the keys, so that we might use them.
The opening words of the creeds – ‘I believe’ – suggest that the focus of faith is the individual. Now there is much to be said for such a way of looking at things. One great theme of classical understandings of the Christian faith is that it transforms personal existence. The Gospel accounts of the ministry of Jesus Christ, for example, often speak of individuals (such as Zacchaeus: Luke 19.1–10) whose lives are changed through an encounter with him.
The Christian ‘big picture’ insists that each individual believer is significant. We are known to God by name and will retain our personal identity in the New Jerusalem. There is no question of being swallowed up, like a drop of water in a vast ocean, losing whatever it is that makes us distinctive. The statement ‘I have faith in God’ finds its echo in our realization that God knows and loves each one of us.
Yet Christianity is a corporate faith. As countless Christian writers have discovered down the ages, the life of faith is at its most authentic when we relate to other believers. We help one another to go deeper into the riches of our shared faith; we support one another in our trials; we affirm one another’s strengths, and we work to deal with one another’s weaknesses. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous work Life Together (1938), is one of many to emphasize that the Christian community arises naturally from the core themes of the Christian faith.
Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients.
For this reason, reciting the creeds is to be seen as an act of corporate witness, not simply a personal confession of faith. It is not I alone who has put my trust in God; it is the community of faith down the ages that shares this faith with me. In using the creed to frame my faith, I am aligning myself with this community and affirming that I belong to it. We see the world of experience in the light of a world of beliefs.
The creeds thus help prevent us from lapsing into a maverick individualism (‘This is the way I see it – so it must be right’) or an impoverished account of faith that misses out on the riches that other Christians have discovered before us and around us. Christianity needs to be constantly refreshed by living springs of water. The creeds are like channels, connecting us with both the fountainhead of faith and the faithful reflections of those who have inhabited its landscape in the past.
The opening words of the creed are as much an invitation as they are an affirmation. They invite us to share the faith of Abraham, who trusted God’s promises and set out into the unknown (Genesis 12.1–4), and the myriads who came after him, whose trust was in this same joy-giving, life-changing God. Yes, Christianity is about certain ideas that we believe; but it is more fundamentally about a God whom we discover to be trustworthy and allow to become the foundation and lodestar of our lives.
Christianity allows us to see things as they really are, and points us to something (and someone) we can trust. Faith is about finding security in life, being anchored to God, who is our ‘rock of refuge’ and our ‘strong fortress’ (Psalm 31.2). Looking out from this place of safety, we can see the landscape of the world as it really is, illuminated by God. Perhaps this is what the Psalmist has in mind when he declared (Psalm 27.1):
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
Faith is ‘the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ (Hebrews 11.1). We walk in faith and hope, not in full possession of all we will one day inherit, but with one foot in that new and coming kingdom. Though based in this world, we are anchored in the next. Faith is about reaching out towards things to come, embracing and anticipating that future joy. It is about trusting the big picture of the Christian faith and stepping into it, knowing that we are meant to be part of this picture and not merely external observers. This point is so important that we need to explore it further.
Stepping into the ‘big picture’
There are three basic questions we need to ask about any Christian belief. First, why do we think this is true? What reasons can we give for believing it? Second, how can we make sense of this? What is the best way of explaining it? And third, what difference does a belief make? If it is right, how does it affect the way we live?
In this final chapter of this introductory volume we will focus on this third question as we prepare for a lively and stimulating exploration of Christian beliefs in the four volumes to follow. If a given Christian belief – such as the doctrine of the incarnation or Trinity – is true, how does it change the way in which we think and live? To answer this important question, let’s think more about the Christian big picture – the rich and capacious way of seeing things that is hard-wired into the Christian faith.
Earlier (p. 29), we noted Evelyn Waugh’s description of how his new Christian faith allowed him to see things clearly for the first time. Let’s look very closely at the way he phrased this discovery, reading his words slowly to make sure that we appreciate the power of the image he uses.
Conversion is like stepping across the chimney piece out of a Looking-Glass world, where everything is an absurd caricature, into the real world God made; and then begins the delicious process of exploring it limitlessly.
What Waugh is describing is leaving behind a distorted and illusory world, entering into the real world God made – what we know as the big picture of the Christian faith – and discovering the difference this makes to his thought and life.
I remember watching the film Mary Poppins when it first came out in 1964. It was a wonderful movie, telling the story of how the arrival of a new nanny sprinkled stardust on the dull and respectable life of a banker’s family in Edwardian London. One scene entranced me. Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke stop to admire a chalk drawing on a London street – and then step into it, thus entering a new world. Part of me dismissed this as sentimental nonsense. But another part of me delighted in this imaginative adventure. The wonder of stepping into another world!
We’ve already seen how the Christian faith invites us not simply to look at Christian beliefs, but to look through them, and thus enter a world in which we view things in new ways. We no longer simply ‘see’ the big picture; we step inside it and become part of it. By faith, we are citizens of a new and better country, with the right to inhabit it – and the desire to explore it. The creeds offer us a map of this new world, a lens through which we can bring its landscapes into focus and a light that illuminates its shadowlands. The creeds are there to help us explore this world, find our way around it and above all get used to living within it.
Thinking about this world
Now that we realize this world is a land through which we pass on our way to our true home, rather than being our true home itself, we can look at it in new ways, and no longer need to regard it as defining the limits of reality. However, the Christian way of seeing things is not about running away from a real world that we can see, touch and feel, into some kind of unreal ghostly world. Rather, it is about realizing that this is the ghostly world that must give way to a fuller and richer renewed creation. What we see around us is the shadow; reality in all its fullness has yet to come.
It’s a bit like The Matrix (1999). This highly original film develops the idea that we live in a world that feels totally real to us, and which we accept as defining our limits. Yet anyone who is able to step outside it and look at it from this new perspective realizes the truth – that our world is pale, insipid and shadowy in comparison to the greater reality of the world that surrounds it. It is a simulation, a copy, of a greater reality. And once we have seen that greater reality, we can look at our own world of time and space with new eyes and see it for what it really is. It’s hard not to observe the parallels with a Christian way of thinking here.
Let’s revisit Plato’s analogy of the cave once more (p. 23). Remember, that analogy asks us to imagine people imprisoned all their lives in an underground cave, who see and know only a world of shadows. The cave is real enough. It’s just that the prisoners don’t know that a greater reality lies beyond its walls. They believe that its flickering shadows define both the nature and limits of reality. What they think is home is actually a prison. Yet this is an insight that you can only gain by stepping outside the cave and seeing what lies beyond it.
So imagine that someone arrives in the shadowlands of the cave from this outside world. He draws a map that allows the cave-dwellers to see that their gloomy cavern is actually part of a greater reality. He offers to lead them from its shadows into the bright and brilliant world beyond. That, in a nutshell, is what the Christian themes of revelation and salvation are all about. Jesus of Nazareth both shows us the way things really are, and makes possible a new way of life.
This is a leading theme of John’s Gospel, which speaks of Jesus of Nazareth as the ‘true light that enlightens everyone’, who came ‘into the world’ (John 1.9). In Jesus Christ ‘the Word became flesh and lived among us’ (John 1.14). He is the ‘light of the world’ (John 8.12; 9.5), who allows us to see our world for what it really is, and points to another world, where we truly belong and where a place has been prepared for us. We will consider these ideas in more detail in the third volume of this series.
Plato’s image of the cave helps us grasp three key aspects of Christian faith – acceptance, trust and transformation. We thought we were confined to a dark, smoky cave. We believed that this was the totality of existence. Then a stranger entered and told us otherwise. He illuminated our understanding and we began to see our situation in a very different light. We started to accept that there might be another world – a better world, where we really belong. If the stranger is to be trusted, we are prisoners who have just been offered freedom. For the stranger promises to take us from bondage to liberty, from darkness to light. Is the stranger trustworthy? Do we really want to be free? (Would it be a lot less scary to stay where we are?)
Or to put it in a slightly different way: in the light of the Christian faith, we realize that we are broken, wounded and in need of healing. On its own, that insight could be devastating, but there is good news. One of the reasons why the first Christians used the Greek word evangelion (‘good news’) to speak about their faith was that they believed it offered hope. The ‘God of hope’ reveals the uncomfortable truth about our situation. Yet God can change things. The gospel speaks of both our illumination and our transformation. We are told that we are ill; yet we are also reassured that there is a cure, which we are invited to accept. We are told that we are in prison, but we are reassured that there is a redeemer who can throw open the gates so that we may go free – and go home. And we are invited to accept and embrace this hope.
The point is clear. We can look at this world in different ways. Those whose creed is ‘what you see is what you get’ picture a one-way street leading inexorably to death and decay: ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ Christians look at the same world, but because we are viewing it in the light of the great themes of the Christian faith, we see it quite differently. It is not that we invent meaning, but that we are enabled to discern it. We simply see things as they really are.
After his conversion to Christianity in 1931, C. S. Lewis wrote an allegorical account of the new way of seeing and thinking that now shaped his life. The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933) is rightly regarded as one of his most difficult books but it is one that repays the patient reader. In it, Lewis tells the story of a ‘pilgrim’ – a thinly disguised version of himself – who feels drawn to a mysterious island that he realizes is his heart’s desire. After a long journey, during which he is accompanied by a Guide, he finally arrives at this island. It is a transforming moment, but the time comes when he must return home, retracing his steps, and this is when the book gets really interesting.
When the ‘pilgrim’ walks back through the same landscape after coming to faith – the ‘regress’ of the book’s title – he discovers that its appearance seems to have changed. His Guide explains that he is now ‘seeing the land as it really is’. He has been given new eyes. ‘Your eyes are altered. You see nothing now but realities.’
Lewis is here trying to put into words the biblical notion that an encounter with the living God transforms our vision. Three striking images are used in the New Testament to help us understand this point: a veil is removed from our eyes; our sight is healed; and scales fall from our eyes. In every case, a barrier to seeing things as they really are is done away with. And once we see things rightly, this will naturally affect the way we live.
The balcony and the road
To explore this point further, let’s look at a classic analogy that many have thought helpful, which is found in the writings of John Alexander Mackay (1889–1983). Mackay was a Scottish theologian whose distinguished career led him to become President of Princeton Theological Seminary. When still in his mid-twenties, he spent a year in Madrid learning the Spanish language in preparation for missionary work in Latin America. The famous analogy he developed, which contrasts the views from the ‘balcony’ and the ‘road’,
Imagine a street in a Spanish town, on a warm evening. Some people are walking along, talking about life; others are seated on the balconies of houses, high above the streets, looking down on the bustling scenes below. Their elevated vantage point allows them to overhear the conversations of the people walking along as they go about their business. The people on the balcony are spectators of, not participants in, the stream of life that is passing below them on the street.
Mackay came to see the ‘balcony’ and the ‘road’ as two different ‘perspectives’ or ways of thinking about the Christian faith. The balcony represented ‘the perfect spectator, for whom life and the universe are permanent objects of study and contemplation’. Faith gives us a new vantage point, allowing us a fresh way of seeing things. As we’ve explored, this is unquestionably one of the core themes of the Christian faith.
Yet Mackay believed that the real place of faith was on the ‘road’, where ‘choices are made and decisions are carried out’. Here, faith is about a way of living – about taking decisions about what to do, where to turn and how to live. Those on the balcony are onlookers; those on the road are travellers. The people on the balcony might watch people moving about below, and speculate idly on where these people were going, what they were worried about or where the road led to. But when you are on the road, these are not idle speculative questions. They are real and important. For Mackay, the Christian faith belongs on the road. Faith is not just about making sense of things; it is about obedience, as we try to live out our faith as we travel.
Take the problem of suffering. From the balcony, making sense of suffering is like a logical puzzle. How can a good God allow suffering? On the road, coping with suffering is a very real concern. How can we keep going in the face of suffering? How can we support others in the same situation, while also finding comfort and compassion?
The view from the balcony matters! It offers us a ‘big picture’ that helps us make sense of the detail we see below. It’s as if we have a map of the landscape. But you can’t be content with studying a map all the time. There’s more to life than thinking. Sooner or later, we need to travel. To explore. To journey. To live. The map reassures us that there is indeed a road on which we may travel and a destination that we may finally reach. The map helps us along the way, but our position – most of the time at least – is on the road, as we journey to that destination.
This helps explain why so many people find Christian biographies more helpful and interesting than works of theology. Biographies tell the story of a lived life, of someone who has worked out how to cope with the life of faith, and can pass on a legacy of advice, wisdom and encouragement. ‘Here’s a problem I encountered. And here’s what I found helpful. Maybe it will help you as well.’ Theological books can – though many do not – enable their readers to make more sense of things. But that’s for the balcony. On the road, we need travelling companions – people who have walked the walk of faith before us, and who can pass on to us the wisdom they picked up along the way.
We can look to the past for examples of such wisdom to help us on our road. There are many who have done this journey and left us notes to encourage and guide us as we follow after them. The great Scottish preacher Horatius Bonar (1808–89), best known for his hymns ‘Fill thou my life, O Lord my God’ and ‘I heard the voice of Jesus say’, is one. Bonar knew a lot about suffering, not as an abstract theological question, but as a living reality. Five of his children died while they were still young. He struggled to make sense of this, and found comfort in focusing his thoughts on the compassion of God, who entered into this suffering world in Christ.
We are made partakers of Christ’s sufferings. What honour is this! We are baptized with His baptism; we drink of His cup, we are made like Him in sorrow as we shall hereafter be made like Him in joy! How soothing and sustaining! If reproach, and shame, and poverty are ours, let us remember that they were His also. If we have to go down to Gethsemane, or up to the cross, let us think that He was there before us.
But we do not need to look only to the past for wisdom and consolation. Mackay’s analogy of the balcony and the road reminds us of the importance of other believers around us now, offering us comfort and encouragement as we journey along the road together. We share how we cope with loss and bereavement; with disappointment and failure; and with success and joy. That’s the way it’s meant to be. We’ll have more to say about this in the fourth and fifth volumes in this series.
Believing and behaving
So how does a Christian way of seeing things affect how we live? One of the simplest and most important ethical insights is that the way we see something shapes how we act towards it. I remember visiting a school friend many years ago, and being attacked by his pet dog. It was bad-tempered, mangy and very old. He apologized for its behaviour. It had belonged to his beloved grandmother, and she had asked him, just before she died a year earlier, to look after her dog for the rest of its life. To me, it was just a nasty old dog. To him, it was a link with his past, the beloved pet of a beloved relative and very special to him.
I’m sure everyone reading this will recognize the issue. I saw my friend’s dog as a problem to be avoided. He saw that same dog as something his grandmother had entrusted to him. He was accountable for it. Our view of that same animal was very different.
Let’s go back to Canford School and its block of stone (p. 26). Most people looked at the stone and regarded it as a nuisance, having no value other than for propping up a dartboard. Then someone saw it for what it really was, and realized its true value. Suddenly, a problem became a treasure. From that moment onwards, it was handled with the greatest care!
How we see life affects the way we behave. One of the things that the Roman authorities noticed about the early Christians was their willingness to accept martyrdom for their faith. The Roman authorities regularly imposed the death sentence for taking part in Christian worship or for refusing to worship the emperor. Yet those first Christians would rather die than renounce their faith. Why? Because of the way they saw life. Life was something important and immensely worthwhile – but it was transcended by the hope of heaven. Cyprian of Carthage, a bishop who was martyred for his faith in 258 (p. 14), expressed this point well.
We live here as strangers and pilgrims. Let us embrace the day which assigns each of us to our own homeland – which restores each of us to paradise and the kingdom of heaven, snatching us from this place, and setting us free from the restrictions of this world. Which one of us, when in a foreign country, would not hasten to return to our native land?
Cyprian’s words paint a big picture that allows life and death to be seen in a new light – with implications for the way in which Christians behave. The Christian mode of thinking about this world invites us to see ourselves as ‘citizens of heaven’ who are in exile on earth, but with the firm hope of return to our homeland.
This theme of exile plays a major role in Christian spirituality, giving us a framework for making sense of our situation and sustaining faith and hope as we journey. As a way of conceiving the Christian life, it is modelled on the exile of most of the population of Jerusalem to Babylon during the sixth century before Christ. The Babylonian conquerors of Judea were determined to punish the people for their rebelliousness, but those in exile were sustained through the long, harsh years of exile by an equal determination to keep alive both memories of their homeland and the hope of return. The familiar words of Psalm 137.1 capture this sense of longing:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
The Christian big picture helps us realize that we are exiles on earth – in a cave, to revert to Plato’s analogy – cut off from our homeland, and looking forward eagerly to going home, which is where we really belong. The Christian life is thus poised between past and future, sustained by memory on the one hand and expectancy on the other. We are invited to remember and anticipate. In the past, we recall the great act of redemption by which God delivered us from sin, death and despair through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And in the future, we eagerly look forward to our entry into the New Jerusalem.
This gives us a framework for living on earth. There are things that need to be done here – such as caring for others and serving God. There are things that are to be enjoyed here – such as the beauty of nature and the company and comfort of family and friends. But these are to be seen as anticipating something still greater and better. C. S. Lewis made the point well: we must be careful ‘never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage’.
When I was young, I was forced to learn some poems. I think my schoolteachers considered them to be ‘improving’, and rather optimistically hoped that they would make me into a better person. One of these was attributed to the Irish poet Frederick Langbridge (1849–1922), and went something like this:
Two men look out through the same prison bars,
One sees the mud, the other the stars.
People can be in the same situation yet have a very different outlook. Our creed shapes what we see. Some look down and see only the ‘mud’ – the rut of a meaningless life, ending in an equally meaningless death. But others look up and see the ‘stars’ – and as Christians we are reminded to let our hearts soar heavenwards, where Jesus of Nazareth has gone before to prepare a place for us (Colossians 3.1–4).
We could easily give other examples to make the same point. The Christian big picture calls into question the true value of things that this world values highly – such as wealth and personal status. Somehow, their currency seems to have been devalued. Instead, we learn to value serving others and take pleasure in caring for those whom the world regards as insignificant. ‘Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued’ (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).
Again, some people see the earth as a resource that is there for their convenience. We can do what we like with it. Yet the Christian doctrine of creation reminds us that this earth is not ours. It is God’s, and has been entrusted to us, as its stewards. This gives us a quite different framework for our ethical reflections!
Faith in Christ: early Christian imagery
The early Christians have accompanied us through much of this volume. As we continue to consider our own journey through life, there’s a good deal to be gained by drawing on some of the representations of Jesus of Nazareth – the ‘image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1.15) – that they used to help them reflect on their faith.
Forced underground by the hostility of the Roman Empire, the early Christians dug down into the soft basaltic rock beneath Rome and constructed long tunnels. These became places to meet for prayer and worship and to bury their dead. The Christians covered the walls of these catacombs with powerful images, the best known of which is probably the fish. Why use a fish as a symbol of their faith? Well, apart from being easily drawn, the Greek word for ‘fish’ is ichthus, and i-ch-th-u-s are the initial letters of the Greek words that spell out ‘Jesus Christ, son of God, Saviour’ – a very handy bullet-point summary of faith.
Other ways of representing Christ can be found in the catacombs. For example, he is sometimes drawn in a highly stylized way with a halo, similar to the Roman pagan ‘Sun God’. This image reminded and reassured believers that Jesus is the ‘light of the world’ (John 8.12) whose coming has displaced and overshadowed the pagan gods.
We shall focus here on another two images that were clearly of considerable importance to early Christians as they considered the journey of faith amid difficult and dangerous circumstances. These images are sometimes found together on Christian sarcophagi (the large stone coffins in which the dead were placed). The first image portrays Christ as a philosopher, holding the trademark philosopher’s travelling staff in one hand and a gospel in the other. In classical culture, a philosopher was a teacher of wisdom, whose instruction enabled people to live and die well. With his staff, Christ conquers death; with his gospel, he brings the truth that philosophers had long searched for, but is now fulfilled in his coming, enabling us to see things as they really are.
The second image portrays Christ as the good shepherd (John 10.14) carrying lambs on his shoulders (Luke 15.4–5). The shepherd cares for his sheep because they are his own; he is willing to seek out those that get lost and carry them home when they are exhausted or wounded. It is not difficult to understand the power that this symbol of divine compassion, care and commitment must have had in a Roman cultural environment that was often intensely hostile to those who held such beliefs. That symbol can speak deeply to Christians today, especially when they feel under threat from an intolerant culture.
Both these images help us understand how the early Christians understood their faith: it was about steadfastly and obediently entrusting themselves to Jesus Christ. They placed themselves under his authority. He brought meaning and order to their lives, and was with them at all times, even when they paid the ultimate price for their devotion. It is impossible for us to read about the life and faith of Christians in second- and third-century Rome without feeling challenged. Our devotion can seem but a shadow of that of our distant relatives on the family tree of faith. Those early Christians, though long dead, have much to say to us about the life-changing quality of the gospel.
They, like the first disciples on the shores of Lake Galilee, found in Jesus Christ someone and something so compelling that they responded with everything they had. At their secret meetings on Sundays, they would hear the Gospel accounts of the words and deeds of Jesus read aloud to them, and try to model their lives accordingly. His ways would be their ways. His God would be their God. It is no accident that the New Testament speaks of ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (2 Corinthians 1.3; 1 Peter 1.3).
Yet another symbol that appears frequently in the catacombs, this time to represent the hope of the Christian faith, is an anchor. The New Testament speaks of ‘a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul’, connecting the believer with the risen Christ (Hebrews 6.19). This clearly struck a chord with those early Christians. Though their earthly lives were full of uncertainties, they were anchored in a place of safety, like a ship that has returned from stormy seas to a sheltered harbour. They knew the secure connection that exists between the everyday world of the believer and another world – one into which Christ has already gone, as the first-fruits of those who will follow him.
Why did this image sear itself into the imaginations of the early Christians? Why did it speak so powerfully to them in times of danger and distress? Perhaps the simplest answer is that it is a symbol of connection. It reassures believers that they are connected with the risen Christ; that there is a firm and unbreakable link between their own world and a deeper reality. This ‘hope’ is not a vague and faltering aspiration (‘I hope the world will become a better place’), but a firm and confident trust that, whatever life may bring, we have found a rock on which to stand. As Augustine of Hippo put it in the early fifth century: ‘I live in God. There you should fix your hope, there is the anchor of your heart, so that the tempests of the world will not tear you away.’
Faith, hope and love
As we have seen, Christian faith is about far more than just ‘belief’ – for example, belief that there is a God. As we come to the end of this introductory volume, it may be helpful to summarize the points we have explored and to develop them a little further.
First, Christian faith is about discerning the big picture that is laid out in the Bible and the creeds, realizing how good it is, how much sense it makes, and gradually finding that we are viewing the world in a completely different way.
Remember the little telescope I mentioned in
I asked my science teacher to explain this and he drew diagrams to show me the relative motions of the earth and Mars. After about five minutes, I got it. I could see what was happening. The penny dropped. But someone had to tell me. My teacher gave me a framework for understanding what I had seen, and it made perfect sense. Why didn’t I think of that myself, I wondered.
But that’s what revelation is all about. It’s about being given a big picture that we couldn’t conceive ourselves. And once we are given it, we discover just how much sense it makes. Theologians talk about faith being both ‘beyond reason’ and ‘reasonable’. What they mean by that is that it’s not something that we could work out completely for ourselves. We need to be told and shown the way things really are. Yet once we have been given this way of seeing things, we discover just how much sense it makes.
Part of the process of growing in faith is coming to appreciate the spiritual vitality of this deeper understanding of things. In one sense, this aspect of faith is primarily about intellectual acceptance. Although we can’t prove that this new way of seeing things is right, it makes so much sense that we are prepared to commit ourselves to living on its basis, knowing that millions before us have found it reliable and resilient. Reciting the creeds is about holding hands with those who’ve walked before us along the road of faith and talked through its great themes.
This naturally leads into the second element of faith: trusting this God and this way of thinking, and exploring its implications. It is about realizing that a ‘surface reading’ of things is simply inadequate. There is a big picture to be discovered that goes far beyond the limited and impoverished view of things that results from skimming the surface of reality. The creed of many around us may be ‘what you see is what you get’. Yet we are called to go ‘further up and further in’, and help others raise their horizons and open their eyes to a deeper and richer understanding of reality.
Third, faith is about the way we live. It is about entering into and acting in accordance with this bigger picture, aligning ourselves with its vision of reality. Christian morality does not need to borrow ideas to help it work out what is right and wrong; these are all contained within its big picture. Our task is to explore the moral landscape of our faith and allow it to illuminate and inform our actions.
Instead of passively accepting the ways of thinking that we find around us, we develop a way of seeing reality that is based on the Christian faith itself. ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds’ (Romans 12.2). Faith is about transforming our hopes, values and expectations in the light of the new way of seeing things that the Christian faith makes possible. Who we are shapes what we see. Christianity changes who we are, so that we see things with new eyes and in new ways.
Fourth, Christian faith is not limited to accepting things the way they are. It proclaims, joyfully and confidently, that they can be changed. Yes, we are sinners, but we can become forgiven and transformed sinners. Yes, we are mortal, but we are offered the right to enter the New Jerusalem and dwell as honoured citizens within its courts. Faith and hope are closely linked in the Christian proclamation, for both are grounded in the trustworthiness and graciousness of God. ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit’ (Romans 15.13).
And fifth, Christian faith leads to changed conduct. It affects the way we live. When writing to the Christian community in Rome, Paul expresses his delight that their faith was known throughout the inhabited world of his day (Romans 1.8). In that same letter, he rejoices that their obedience was also celebrated (Romans 16.19). Paul brings these ideas together in speaking of the ‘obedience of faith’ (Romans 1.5; 16.26) – a Greek phrase that almost certainly means something like ‘the obedience which springs from faith’ or ‘the obedience which is based on faith’.
Paradoxically, belief in heaven does not lead Christians to disengage from the world, as some poorly informed critics suggest. A vision of the New Jerusalem makes us yearn to bring about at least some of its values and attributes in our own age, trying to shape the present in the light of God’s coming kingdom. If heaven is to be a place in which there is no longer any pain (Revelation 21.4), why not try to do something about the suffering we see around us now? It is no accident that so many Christians find themselves drawn to medical and humanitarian work, seeing this as part of the big picture of the Christian faith.
Moving on
We have used the image of a beautiful and mysterious landscape several times in this introductory volume. In the next four books we will be exploring its forests and rivers, its valleys and mountains. We have already seen how the Christian faith is like a lens, bringing this landscape into sharper focus. It is like a map that helps us make sense of the terrain over which we are travelling. It is like a light that illuminates our path ahead of us and the shadowlands around us.
We paused and lingered, tantalizingly, over the opening words of the creed: ‘I believe’. We are now ready to move on and explore more fully what comes next – the Christian vision of God.