Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.
You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For, “In just a little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay.” And, “But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.” But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved. (Hebrews 10:22-39)
We are coming to the heart of the matter. According to the commentaries, the Jewish Christians to whom this letter was written had been accustomed to a sort of acceptance by their community. The Romans and others didn’t agree with Jewish exclusivity (meaning that the Jews refused to behave like everyone else by giving tacit acknowledgment of all the gods) but “they’re the Jews.” The Christians were rocking the Roman world, not only refusing the tacitly acknowledge all the gods, but encouraging others to join them in their strange beliefs. And among those strange beliefs was the idea that the emperor was not the supreme ruler of the world.
At first, the persecution might have been exciting. “Look at us, we’re being counter-cultural! We’re going to change the world, and Jesus is going to return for us any day!” But days dragged into weeks, and years, and, well, “What if we were wrong?”
This is where my faith tends to weaken. It’s not that I lose heart as a Christian often. When that does happen, I tend to apply something of Pascal’s logic to things. If Christianity is wrong then I may not be rewarded for my life, except by the fact of having lived a good life – and that’s enough. But if Christianity is right and true, I will be rewarded and that will be better. Either way, there’s no real reason to turn from the path.
No, it’s other areas of my life… the fear that my writing will get me nowhere, the slowness with which one loses weight, the fact that people won’t think outside their little boxes and yet demand that I think like them…. I’m not facing much persecution, really. Maybe a 0.25 on a scale of one to one hundred, but things aren’t going according to my plan. I should be a best-selling author by now (or at least have gotten some encouragement.) I should we at least a pound less than I do by now, and where are the muscles my weight-lifting should be building? And you’d think at least one person would realize that there’s more to the world than their little box . . .. At the very least, I should have more produce to take to the food pantry!
Things aren’t going according to my plans. I realize my expectations aren’t realistic. They’re real, and the discomfort of not getting them is real, but not realistic. The point isn’t for me to get the things I want. The point is for me to become a stronger, wiser, more loving, more faithful person. The real goal isn’t for us to use the government to solve everyone’s problem. The real goal is for us to encourage and equip those who have problems to be better people – whether that involves their overcoming their problem or their overcoming its status as a problem.
Tomorrow, we enter the hall of faith, so I’ll postpone discussing it at any length here, except to say that it, and becoming the person it causes us to become, is more important than the easing of our woes, trial, or petty difficulties (at whatever level you care to describe them.) Let me end, instead, with this idea. If we teach ourselves or others to have faith
in ourselves (themselves,)
n the outcome,
in the government
or in mankind,
we have failed.
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