Add To Your Faith

           For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (II Peter 1:5-8)

          I like the fact that Peter starts out the directions in this passage with “make every effort.” If he’d started like Yoda (“Do, or do not. There is no try.”) I’d have washed out as a jedi under his teaching, because I try, and fail. Oh, I understand the standard motivational appeal in the teaching. When we “try” we set ourselves up for failure and excuse ourselves for failure in our own minds because, after all, we were trying. But in a “pass-fail” economy, how many of us would walk away because we failed? There are people who think I’m strong, but my first response to things not going my way is to run away. But Peter says, “Make every effort.” If I fail this second, there’s another second in which to try again.

          What Peter writes next is hard. What are we to make every effort to do? Add to our faith. We’re back to faith, that thing I can’t put on the table and examine, can’t compare point by point with what I have or do. On a scale of 1 to 100, is my faith a 99? Or a -99? You may think you know how much faith I have, or how much faith you have. I just don’t, and that’s probably a good thing because if I knew, I’d either be arrogant or sink into despair.

          Peter doesn’t tell us to have X level of faith. He told us to add to whatever faith we have. The thing we’re to add to it is goodness. Adding goodness doesn’t help unless we have faith. Faith is the foundation of the building. Goodness is the rough frame of the building. Knowledge is the rough utility installation (sewer, water, gas, electric, HVAC.) Self-Control is the insolation. Perseverance is the drywall and interior fixtures, and at least the start of the exterior finishes. Godliness involves the walking surfaces, inside and outside. Mutual affection adds the final mechanical trimming and does some landscaping. Love adds the mirrors and the trim. Those might not be exact or good parallels, but the point is that everything we add on the foundation is supported by the foundation, and all the others are added when they are because the things that come before them need them in order to function properly.

    If, for example, you increase knowledge, but have no goodness, your knowledge will likely corrupt you. And love can’t hang on walls that don’t exist. It can’t function without perseverance and self-control. Without love, the building really doesn’t function well. It’s vital and necessary but it doesn’t function well on its own. It improves the functionality of everything that came before it.

          Going back to the start then, goodness doesn’t operate as well without faith as with it, but faith needs goodness to operate as well. Adding goodness will strengthen or add to the faith, even if we don’t realize it. Faith also needs goodness to be more complete. As you go down the list, each adds something to the last, and takes something from the last that is necessary to it.