I’m in a women’s small group and I'm the only westerner among 5 Korean women. I'm the Bible study leader who is fumbling her way through the language discrepancies, theological training helps and hindrances, and cultural-age differences. We are studying Romans. It was their choice and now I see it as a terrifically challenging choice and one I’m ill prepared to do justice to in my context. A great position to learn! Last week we looked at Romans 4 where it talks about Abraham’s incredible faith. Even as the promise of God looked beyond hope Abraham grew in his faith. Mysterious!
Personally I’ve been wrestling with “faith” language. In the church we throw the word around as if we all know what it means and “have it”. But do we really know what it means? Do we really “have it” as if it is some favorable disease or common cold? In the sense that we have learned to have a "faith confession" I think most Christians “have it”. We can tell some Biblical stories. We can talk about Jesus who we believe lived a human-God life, died to redeem human sin and rose again to give life to all who confess their sins. We might even be able to recite a creed. If you are really good and committed you might be able to rattle off your church’s articles of faith. Does our “faith” however, go beyond right believing, really?
For me faith can no longer be only some cognitive enterprise of a solitary person. (as if it was really only that before) Instead it must be a paticipatory somatic and integrative undertaking in community. If it isn’t, then faith leads to what some call functional or practical atheism. I am painfully aware of my own practice of "atheism" as it relates to the somatic communal expression of faith. In theological circles we do have ideas to talk about such an embodied faith. We talk about the integration of “ortho-doxy(right thinking), orthopraxy(right practice) and even “ortho-pathy” (right heart). I think these concepts help us to see that faith isn’t only “what we think” or “what we’ve concluded by life experimentation” or even by how we understand the nature of our “will”. A faith not lived isn't faith at all. Yet a faith lived alone is equally void of faith. Faith is to be engaged in by the whole person among persons. Faith moves beyond me, my mind, my heart and my own “doings” and into the places and spaces with people we call “world”. As we experience the mysteries of “faith” so too do others who experience us.
As the conversation in our small group progressed we expressed discouragement together. Our collective reality reflects lives lacking integrated and embodied faith. We can talk about “right doctrine” and “right living” and “right heart” but it still seems so entirely cognitive and stale. Granted…this is in our problem not “faith’s’ problem. I appreciated our honesty with each other.
As I listened and wrestled with them it occurred to me that our “faith” is not only missing some form of integrated embodiment but our confessions of faith are too. We have failed to see and tell the stories of real life Abrahams. We spend so much time practicing the cognitive language of our faith and even learning great theologies to go with it. Jesus is someone we’ve learned to know from a book. We’ve made lists of what Jesus did, published Bibles with red lettered sentences to excavate the nuances of Jesus’ language, combed historical material to recreate the real, real Jesus. It has been helpful. However, have we fostered imaginations which allow us to see Jesus in the people we see, touch, and hear everyday?
A popular buzz word or self-descriptor in Christian circles these days declares selves to be “followers of Jesus”. I love this language, and use it because it gets at the need to embody our faith. But still, do we tell stories of living people who are following Jesus? Do we know how to see what it looks like for us to be “followers of Jesus” in our villages around the world?
In the midst of doing really good things with “faith alone”, have we dehumanized a “faith” which was always intended to be embodied in community? Maybe we should begin to call our disembodied faith -- faith "alone".
There is room for not only confessing the tenets of our doctrines but en-fleshing them with real life embodiments of Jesus. What if we began to tell the people’s stories of living faith so that our collective faith moves from “idea” to "body"? Hearing stories of people participating in and practicing faith would engage our own imaginations and allow the mystery of faith to compel us out into our own stories. Maybe if we heard stories of real life faith we could relearn to read our Bible stories. We might even learn to retell our beloved creeds and statements of faith in ways that help people, ourselves included, embody faith in our local communities.
As the group struggled with “faith” I told a story of a real life person with faith, I think, on par with Abraham. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time but later realized what had happened. I told about a man from Rwanda who after being an orphaned refugee in Uganda returned to his home country post-genocide to take in orphans. He went, he stayed, and he gives all he has because of a somatic faith reality. There are so many more like him all over our world and probably in our own local communities. However, he is one who continues to burn on my heart. I told them his story because this man for me embodies the reality of faith and gives me hope for my own faith quest. If he can embody faith in his context, and if he can be a radical follower of Jesus Christ there, than I can find courage to do the same “here” too.
Later a woman who comes to the Bible study asked more questions about Rwanda and this man. She had some good questions and an intense desire to learn. She asked if I stay in contact with this Rwandan man. I do. She asked if there would be a way to help. I said, 'There is." She asked for more information and wanted to do something tangible. She did.
Hmmm... faith.... What is faith? This Korean woman, even in the midst of struggling with the meaning of faith, mysteriously held faith, and shared faith in our midst. She embodied it in those moments. God embodied himself in her for the rest of us. Her actions will go on to confirm someone else’s faith, a complete stranger, who lives a world away on a different continent and in a different culture. How can I explain the nature of that moment? It cannot be counted, categorized or theorized. It is what it is-embodied integrated faith. It is encouraging, compelling and revealing of a God who embodies himself even today in a world we call home. If nothing else, faith is told and beheld so that it can be lived. Faith "alone" lacks life but faith shared in the ongoing story of our complicated lives has the power to give life. We need to do more telling! We need to do more beholding so that we can do more living!
