The Courage to Believe--August 31, 2021

The Courage to Believe--August 31, 2021

"Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible." [Hebrews 11:2-3]

In a world that so often prizes assembly-line uniformity (usually for the sake of maximizing profits), it is an act of courageous faith to believe that you are not a mistake, but a masterpiece.

And you are.

But believing that you are a creation of God rather than merely a product for consumption or a means of production for increasing the third-quarter earnings is a countercultural thing to do.  Believing that each of us, in all of our uniqueness, are creations of God, rather than cosmic accidents, is a big deal.  It changes how we understand our own worth and value, and how we see everybody around us, as well.

Think about it for a moment: for an awful lot of human history, worth or acceptability has been based either on "usefulness"--how much you can contribute from your talent or labor--or on "sameness"--how much you like the other members of the in-group, versus how different you are.  People in your same tribe or clan or ethnicity could belong--and were worth fighting for, because they shared enough sameness that matched your group's required defining traits.  But those who were deemed "other"--whether because their skin was darker, their language was different, their customs were unusual, or their way of life was deemed "strange"--they were seen all too often as hostile outsiders or dangerous deviants.  In that kind of mindset, people who varied too far from the the cookie-cutter pattern have to be labeled either troublemaking misfits or outright enemies.  

But to claim, as Christians classically have done, that God has made each of us, as well as the whole universe, means saying that each of us bears God's image, and all of us belong.  In a world that decides worth based on how much you fit in according to some visible trait like height or facial features or weight or skin color or wealth or gender, it is a radical--and necessary--thing to say that God has created us each as infinitely precious works of art.  You, in all of your you-ness, and me in all of my me-ness, regardless of our being "marketable."

Sometimes Respectable Religious folk spend all their time thinking about creation as a belief only about the distant past.  Christians have come to be known sometimes for yelling angrily about whether it took six twenty-four hour days, or whether there were dinosaurs on the ark, or whether you can count as a true Christian if you also accept the scientific consensus that the universe is billions of years old rather than six thousand.  And all of that bellowing generates a lot of heat but very little light.  Meanwhile we haven't been nearly as good at talking about how our belief in God as creator means that each person is of infinite worth and value, regardless of their contributions to the economy and apart from what their consumption adds to the GDP.

Our older brother in the faith, Martin Luther, however, offers a really good insight when it comes to creation.  In his Small Catechism, when Luther looks at what it means to say we believe in God the Father, who created heaven and earth, he points us first toward our own lives:  "I believe that God created me, together with all that exists...." In other words, before wild speculation about the origins of the universe eons ago, he points us to look at our own existence as a gift of God.  You and I are here, not because we are profitable to our bosses, or because we are cosmic flukes, but by God's gracious choice to make us in all of our us-ness.

Recognizing that is a statement of faith--it is something we dare to believe, something we dare to trust, over against all the other voices that think we only exist to contribute to someone's bottom line, or that we are valuable only based on our sameness to some cookie-cutter template.  When the writer of Hebrews talks about living by faith, he starts here:  by faith we have a different understanding of ourselves--we, along with all the cosmos, have been fashioned by God, not only the accidents of history, the quirks of physics from after the Big Bang, or the utility we are ascribed by the market.  Surely history and physics are also part of the story of how we came to be here, but we are more than those things can say about us.  We are more than particles and energy.  We are more than a cash value.  We are more than what we appear to the outside observer.  We are creations of the living God.

It can be hard to live like that is true, both for our selves and for everyone else.  But it makes all the difference in the world at least to try.

Let's go face the world now... as the image-bearers of God's own creative presence, going into the midst of others who bear God's image, too.

Lord God, help us to believe we are your creations, and not merely accidents, flukes, or interchangeable parts in a machine.  Help us to be our unique selves, uniquely reflecting your goodness.