Noah didn't go to Church

Exactly what is FAITH?

By now, in the year 2013, there must be innumerable volumes of texts outlining, describing, explaining, and or teaching what FAITH is. And rightfully so, it was one of the most pivotal points Christ tried to get across to us while He walked among us in the flesh. Why did Christ think it was it so important to teach on faith? If we knew we had only a given, limited amount of time on the earth, you would make sure that the time you had left was used in the most productive manner possible.

Here is what most of us still fail to grasp today, FAITH has a Physical component to it. That's right, one of the most intangible, and un-quantifiable elements in our human dynamic, MUST be linked to the most physical, in-your-face matrix' of human life to operate properly, physical ACTION.

James said it best, "Faith without works is dead". James 2:14–26 Succinctly, James meant that having faith means nothing if one is not willing to bring out or demonstrate that faith through action.

It is this action, this ability to step out into the unknown, and often against the norm that creates entirely new human endeavors. So, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Albert Einstein, Madam Currie, Bill Gates, and countless others who have moved the human condition to higher levels, have ALL operated on FAITH. You see, what all of these individuals had first, was a vision or an idea. That's right, what the world now takes for granted in this technical age of thinkers, is that to push forward a new idea, it takes FAITH. So, Einstein has to use faith before his ground-breaking theory of relativity was proven using the sun.
In utilizing the portion of us that is most like God, creating, what starts as an abstract thought or idea is brought into tangible fruition.

So, this gives us a different view entirely, and heaps the responsibility of faith where it belongs, on the one in need of it. I have said this many times. American Christendom has done a great disservice to today’s Christians. This is in the form of allowing Christian congregations to become spiritually and intellectually fat, lazy, spoiled, and most of all complacent in where the church and world is today. The ills of the world, especially the United States in my opinion, is a direct result of this malady.

Here is where the real faith of the Bible's examples and the contemporary counterparts don't match up. The great biblical figures who exemplified the greatest examples of faith, Hagar, Noah, Rahab, Moses, Deborah, Jael, and Job, didn't go to church, or at least spend the rest of their lives in church.

That's right, amazing isn't it?

You see, once these individuals, through whatever early form of religious gathering found out their destiny, legacy, and calling, they WALKED it out! Yes, as my good friend and brother Franklin L. Cunningham says, "They graduated from church-school." Franklin's new book, of the same title explains that the world is in the present stated of moral decay lack because it’s easier for today’s Christians to sit in the comfort of church each week, and merely HEAR what has to be done, what we need to do, and never actually do it. The model looks like this Frank explains. It's like we have a brand new Mercedes-Benz out in the church parking lot, but its sitting up on cinder-blocks. The car is in pristine condition, its only fault, is it has not one tire. But instead of the owner of the automobile mapping out and actually doing what they map out like getting an extra job to afford to buy the new tires, or acquiring a manual to know what type of tires to buy for the car, or making acquaintances with an individual or individuals in the churches who may have extra tires lying about in their garage, THEY simply GO TO CHURCH.

We go to church to hear others tells us how good we will look in the car once it is operational, we go to hear the pastor tells us how nice the car will drive, how beautiful the paint job looks, how good the gas mileage is, and how fast the car will go. So sitting in church hearing this each Sunday is easier by far than actually walking out what God has already given you the power and ability to do. Most of today’s churches have robbed us. They have robbed us of the most miraculous thing human beings have to offer. They have robbed us of the most endearing quality God has always loved about us; our ability to gather greater strength from our adversity. In exchange for exhibiting this strength we have settled just to hear good stories on Sunday Morning while in the comfort of air conditioned churches, homes, and cars.

What moves God is EXERCISED FAITH, not going to church to HEAR about faith. In other words, which individual has done more for the global betterment of mankind, Joel Olsteen or Bill Gates? Who do you think is in need of more immediate help, a people with no drinking water at all, or a people with such an abundance of drinking water they can afford to waste it over-watering lawns, or on television commercials as a musical medium over pots and pans?

By contrast, Noah was told his duty, his legacy, and he walked it out. He did not return to church each week to be told something in a different way he already knew. Noah didn’t need to go to church to complete his task of building the Ark. We hear and read the trials Job went through in the Bible and then we cry when we have a stubbed toe or how about this, when we get lung cancer from twenty plus years of smoking cigarettes. So, since our over-indulgence in churches are the problem, should we stop going? I say no, the major problem lies in unscrupulous or ignorant pastors, "Peddling Hope", as outlined in the book "Hope Peddlers", by Nicholas Carl Moore. The problem lies in the miss-education of today’s Christians, and the endearing pacifying approach used to lull people in the doors. So too much church is what’s wrong. A pacified Christian will give larger offerings, why? Simply because they feel better and not because they think God needs money. The Problem lies in anyone preaching or teaching us to lie down and be happy and take whatever life brings our way. That type of message sounds more like the pacification of cattle than the chosen people of the God most high. This symbiotic relationship has festered for generations into the norm to such an extent parishioners will call the pastor for everything from their child's homework, to aid in getting job promotions. At the end of the day the old adage comes into play, "Too much of anything is bad". We are placed on planet earth, in physical form, for a reason, to endure strife. Why is it that we feel we are supposed to be "Strife Free". I learned over twenty years ago serving as Deacon that I seemed to be serving a different God than my fellow congregates. The God I served, to be quite frank, was not stupid. Many of the families I served seemed to be totally oblivious to the simple facts and dynamics of human life. They wanted to blame God, or the devil, for even the most basic of our human ills. The God I served and knew did not control every aspect of human life, like some Cosmic Puppet-Master working 7 Billion earth-bound Marionettes. What's the solution? Here's the kicker, it lies with the congregations, and not pastors. Hey, Pastors, the bad ones, have merely positioned themselves to receive monies these people would waste anyway. In seeking assuage their life-responsibilities, easier by far is to pay guilt-money than be responsible, and when their dogmatic wish-list does not manifest, then the prayer was not long enough or the sermon fervent enough.

If faith carried with it back then, the same component it carried in our churches now, Christ would have only touched on it maybe a week’s total time out of the three years of His ministry. But He didn't, He spent a great deal of time on faith and its myriad manifestations. The irony today is through the advent of technology and improved human conditions around the world there is less suffering and therefore less need to utilize faith. If we can’t work, and have no food, shelter and clothes, we now have systems in place to alleviate some of society’s sufferings’ that went unchecked in Jesus’ time. But in these improvements, have we lost something else? Have we now moved away from God in favor of systems that now provide our intrinsic human needs? Was faith and God the intended catalyst to move mankind into the systems serving mankind today? Will a society that no longer needs FAITH bring forth stronger or weaker human beings? I personally believe that God wants us to grow in both faith and knowledge as Proverbs 4:5 explains. I believe that if we take care of one another, which is one of His two greatest desires, (Love thy Neighbor) the end justifies the means. Yet, that help MUST stem from a genuine care and love of people, and not just a business system of help.

So, we find ourselves back at the beginning, back where Christ found us, in our selfishness. Strange, but not surprising that still in this day, some three thousand years later, we are still in the Garden blaming a serpent for our own disobedience.