Stephen
Terry, Director
Having
Faith
Commentary
for the May 23, 2026, Sabbath School Lesson
"And without faith it is impossible to
please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and
that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." Hebrews 11:6
On the surface, faith seems like
a simple topic. Doesn't it just mean to believe in something or someone? But
centuries upon centuries of theology and apologetics giving birth to hundreds
of thousands, perhaps millions of homilies have hidden any simplicity in a
bustling ant hill of chaotic activity where the reason for the hill's existence
is hidden deep beneath the frenetic jostling of all the insects. The queen
safely tucked away and secure in her purpose goes about her activity regardless
of the opinions of all her subjects, all the opinions and arguments of the more
scholarly inclined of her subjects notwithstanding. I doubt any single ant
questions why they are doing all of this or whether the queen cares about her
subjects and their lives. They continue to do as they have always done, and
their success relies on every ant committing to that paradigm, creating a structural
integrity in their society that allows them to survive challenges beyond the
ability of a single ant alone.
Would we call this faith? Are
ants capable of having faith in one another, faith in their leadership, faith
in their purpose? They appear able to discern needs and communicate necessary
responses to those needs while other ants fall in line to create the necessary
responses. But do they understand, as we claim to, the depth of meaning and its
import underlying our societal efforts to meet and surpass the achievements of
the insect world? Does an ant ever look up at the night sky and marvel at the
magnificence that glitters above us? And as we wonder this about the ants, does
any being beyond our vast, yet still humble, efforts to comprehend our universe
wonder if we ourselves understand the awesomeness of what we see? The ant may
have physical limitations that prevent them from understanding. Maybe their tiny
world is all the awesomeness with which they can interact. If so, that begs the
question whether on another level that is true of us as well. We like to think
that our search for knowledge and understanding is limitless, but is it? Maybe
this is where faith abides, that frontier between what we readily understand,
and that which lies just out of reach of understanding. In the eponymous
series, Rod Serling might have called this area "The Twilight Zone," a boundary
between the light of understanding and the darkness shielding us from answers.
While thousands of horror
stories, movies, and art works around the world try to teach us to fear that
darkness, there is a certain safe feeling that comes from remaining in darkness.
There are those in the ignorance-is-bliss crowd who go through life operating
under the principle of "What you don't know cannot hurt you." However, the
Covid Pandemic revealed that many can be hurt and even die while being ignorant
of what they are facing. Therefore, we launch our probes into space seeking
answers that will light up the darkness. Sometimes those answers can be more
frightening than the darkness of ignorance as we grow in our understanding of
how significant impacts between meteors and planets have shaped our solar
system. Despite their rarity, we can no longer assume everlasting safety. It
makes more sense instead of wishing on a falling star to wish that the meteor safely
bypasses us while it travels through the solar system. While there are examples
where the Earth has been struck in past ages, causing mass extinctions, so far
we have been spared that experience at least since Neolithic times.
A popular topic in modern
science is whether life exists on other planets in the universe. If it does,
would it be inclined to be either more or less advanced technologically than
our own? If our paths crossed would they be inclined to wipe us out as we
attempted to do to so many indigenous societies on our planet when we used
superior technology to subjugate them, or would we attempt doing the same to those
alien visitors if their technology was lacking compared to ours as in the "Avatar"
movie series? From computations based on statistical probabilities and astral
studies enabled by powerful analytical telescopes, we have determined that the
odds favor other life out there somewhere. But we have no idea how that life
would be defined or if it would be friendly, hostile, or indifferent to
humanity. A popular science fiction genre has arisen based on the idea that an
alien race could be tempted to mine the resources of Earth. In the process, while
not being hostile to humanity, their indifference causes them to see the loss
of mankind as simply a sad by product of their industrial exploitation of our
world.
While all of this is speculative,
it has foundation in the experiences of the colonial era in our past, an era
that still haunts the relationships between modern nation states with fears of
slipping once again into the enslavement of entire nations to the whims of
their more powerful neighbors, craving rare resources to fuel the technological
advances of empire. Millions have died in conflicts between such empires contesting
for those limited resources. Knowing this of ourselves, it is not hard to
project such ambitions onto hitherto unknown alien societies. This is largely because
such beliefs are founded upon fear, and once engaged, fear does not easily
yield the field to anything else, focusing entirely on eliminating the
perceived threat rather than determining whether that threat and the fear it
induces is realistic.
While it is equally possible
that such aliens are just as likely to have discovered how to live safely and peaceably,
fear forbids that consideration. Persistent faith barely gives that idea steerage.
Steerage has historically been the cheapest, most cramped, and hidden away passenger
spaces on a cargo ship or ocean liner. Very few on the upper decks were likely
to concern themselves with the comfort or survivability of those in steerage. Those
forlorn passengers survived on faith that the trip to a country they have never
seen was worth the sacrifice. Often the reward for such faith was overcrowded
lodging in pestilential tenements in the ethnic ghettos of the New World. But
despite those realities, faith continued, and they continued to come..
But does such faith exist any
longer? Their faith endured even when things turned out to be nothing like they
expected. But faith today is of such flimsy substance that if we feel God has
not answered a prayer where we were extremely specific about what he needed to
do, we readily "kick him to the curb" and announce to the world that we doubt
God even exists. Why is that? Are we simply that petulant? Or do we disallow
the existence of any God who is uncontrollable even when we say the right words
in the right incantation, a magical god of our creation who guarantees success
if we get the words right? The binding of such a god in that way would define a
very weak being incapable of freeing himself from thralldom to our desires. How
ridiculous would it be for an ant to deny the reality of humanity's existence
because we could not be compelled to fulfill the ant's wishes? Doubtless we
would laugh in the face of such effrontery. How much more so would God stand
astonished at ours?
It can seem easier to deny God's
existence than to confront the apparent dilemmas that arise if we consider the
possibility of his existence. Standard theological problems such as theodicy
and apparent indifference to suffering may seem like insurmountable problems,
especially for relatively new believers, complicated by these challenges being
continually made by those who refute whether faith is reasonable and practical.
Theodicy is dealt with in the story of Job. Whether the story is seen as
allegory or literal, the answer is the same, unremitting faith, despite
suffering, will have its reward. In our more modern era, we eschew suffering as
being escapable due to scientific advances, rendering belief in God
unnecessary. However, age brings enlightenment when we discover that pain and
suffering come to all, and just like death, it is inescapable. Its existence
therefore is not an excuse for denying the existence of God. It is often an
effort to deflect our own culpability for the suffering in the world. Tobacco,
alcohol, drugs, pollution in many forms, and indolence have done much to contribute
to humanity's suffering, and these are all the results of our own actions
rather than God's indifference or absence.
It is time we admit our culpability
in these things and come to God in faith. The Bible calls this repentance. It
may not be popular to admit we are responsible for the problems we wish to
blame God for. The news and social media both are filled with those playing the
blame game. Everyone has someone to blame for why things are not going the way
they want them to go. Very few look into the mirror to see the true source of
the problem. When we finally do that, faith can lead us home.