What's the use of faith?

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 1 Corinthians 15:3-5

“Well, you’ve got to have faith, haven’t you?”

Cheerful, positive people often say something like that if you ask them how they’re coping with the pressures of life. And good for them. It’s better to be positive than negative, better to be an optimist than a pessimist.

But sometimes you can’t help wondering what they actually mean. Faith in what, exactly? Even more, faith in who? The way they speak of faith makes it seem like some free-floating substance that you can somehow breathe in or drink in and then draw on when you need to confront trials. Is that really anything more substantial than “always looking on the bright side of life”?

Yes, it may be better than collapsing into anxiety, but it’s far from what Christians mean – or should mean - when they talk about faith. For the Christian, faith has content and substance; it’s more than simply a mood or a personality disposition.

From the earliest days of the church, Christians have attempted to summarise the essence of their faith in brief formulas, statements known as “creeds”.

The nearest thing we get to it in the New Testament is 1 Corinthians 15, quoted above, where Paul feels the need to “remind” the somewhat flaky believers in Corinth of what robust, red-blooded faith means. Not surprisingly, he focusses on the death of Jesus “for our sins”, on his burial, on his bodily resurrection “on the third day”, and on his “appearances” to Cephas (that’s Simon Peter), then to the rest of the apostles, and then to large numbers, including (wonder of wonders!) himself.

It's very brief – but there’s nothing airy-fairy about it, is there!

Probably some three or four hundred years later the “Apostles’ Creed” was composed (nobody knows for sure who by): this covers far more…

I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, was dead and was buried. He descended into hell, rose again from the dead on the third day, ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

That’s truly packed with substance!

In some church traditions this or something similar is recited regularly. I was converted in a tradition which doesn’t use such forms of “liturgy” – and occasionally I have regretted that, for while liturgy can become repetitive and mechanical, if used thoughtfully it can also have the effect of (a) binding a congregation together (start “we” rather than “I”) and (b) anchoring it in history, in days when the church is often prey to (I nearly said plagued by) faddish novelties. The church wasn’t born just 40 or 50 years ago; we modern Christians have inherited a long and rich inheritance, and we are arrogant and foolish if we neglect that. (The word “catholic”, of course, with a small c, simply means “universal”.)

(Mind  you, churches like the ones I have belonged to can get round the problem by singing a creed – Graham Kendrick, for one, set the Apostles’ Creed to lively music some thirty-five years ago with “We believe in God the Father”. Well done, Mr Kendrick, say I.)

All this presents a real challenge to anyone claiming to be a Christian: How substantial is my faith? Or, to put it the other way round, is my faith vague and little more than wishful thinking?

Not every Christian can be a theologian, with a grasp of all the niceties of Christian doctrine. But Jesus tells us to love the Lord our God with all our mind, as well as with all our heart, soul and strength. And that means giving serious thought to what the Bible – even the difficult parts – means. And that, in turn, means taking seriously a regular discipline of reading and thinking. The old-fashioned word is “meditating”.

We live in a world where many unchurched people have not deliberately rejected Christianity (in spite of what we sometimes say), but have simply never been invited to engage with it and have therefore given up. We have failed to pique their interest so that they want to understand more. (Perhaps, too, they can’t see that our lives are significantly changed by what we profess to believe.)

I said at the beginning that the key thing about faith is not just faith in what but also faith in who. Words, however important, can deaden as well as enlighten, so we need always to remember that what ultimately matters is a relationship – a relationship with God as our loving heavenly Father through faith in Jesus Christ, his Son.

And so we need to ask ourselves, Is that my experience? Have I become a new person through this great thing called faith?

Faith, then… a vague hoping for the best, or the living, dynamic mainspring of my life? That’s the key question.

But thinking about creeds raises other issues as well; so I hope you might join me next time as I return to this theme…

Father, thank you that Christian faith rests on facts, not feelings, that certain wonderful events actually happened and have changed everything. Help me to be a true witness to this, in both words and deeds. Amen.