We’re too Busy to Have Faith

We’re too Busy to Have Faith

We’re too busy to have faith. It’s a fact. Our days start earlier and earlier, and we work until the night before we think about going to sleep. We are surrounded by machines that are supposed to make our lives easier, yet somehow, we work more. We have become project-driven and don’t have a big-picture vision. So, was it simpler a hundred, a thousand, two thousand years ago?

I don’t think so. Instead of driving 400 miles to see family for over five and a half hours, you would walk three days to go only 50 miles. Instead of building massive skyscrapers, you’d build a four-story flat. Why? Because there were no elevators. No one would want to walk more than four stories at a time. Instead of ordering out, you would track, hunt, kill, and dress your dinner. Or you would wait an entire growing season and hopefully have a good harvest that you could put up for the winter.

No, things weren’t simpler; they were just slower. And that may be their advantage. When we slow life down, even for a few minutes, it gives our system time to catch up. It gives our brain a chance to yawn and stretch. It gives our lungs a chance to take a deep, slow, and deliberate breath. It gives our imagination time to unfocus and to look around at the vastness of the universe. Think about it. When is the one time you have nothing else clawing at your time? When you take a shower! And that is the number one place people have new ideas these days.

Faith cannot be nurtured when we are so busy moving from one deadline to the next that we forget what day, time, or month it is. To have faith in something means you trust in it. You have taken the time to be with that thing you have faith in. And you have not just felt you can believe in that thing, but intellectually, you have relaxed into the idea that the thing you have faith in is worthy of your trust.

I have spoken to many people who say they have faith in God. They may not fully believe or trust that there’s a God. They may feel that we are some vast celestial experiment, simply coming into being after eons of trial and error in a universal primordial soup. Jim, a friend of mine, felt this way.

I asked Jim, “Good for you. You know and have faith that there is no God. So, how do you know?” As usual he began to quote some philosopher and a string of confirmed unbeliever—spouting verbiage and catchy phrases that make him sound chic. After running out of gas, I asked again, “How do you know? Not anyone else. You.” As usual, Jim dug back into other people’s commentary, and I let him get one or two sentences in before I stopped him. I said and asked,” That’s nice. You’re telling me what other people think. But how do you know?” He was stymied by the question, like he’d never thought of it before.

Building faith takes time, and even when we begin to have faith, we only go so far. We act like we deserve only what we can eke out. Remember what it says in the book of Wisdom, “[God] has fashioned all things that they might have being; and the creatures of the world are wholesome…. God formed man to be imperishable; the image of His own nature He made him” (Wisdom 1:14, 2:23). Did you get that? We have being. We exist. We have a soul, a spirit, a nature, an essence, a body. And we, as beings, were created wholesome. We are not contaminated, dirty, bad, impure, unhealthy manifestations by birth. No. After the fall of Adam in the garden, we were able to learn those things. Now, we may be led astray or forced to believe we have become those things. But originally, we all were created good.

We were born to be “imperishable” and in the “image of God’s own nature.” A point of fact: God doesn’t have a body. He is pure spirit. So, how can we be made in the image of God? We are made in the image of His nature. God formed us with a will and the vital part of us to live forever—our souls. The problem is, very few people have true faith in these facts.

One person who did have this faith was the woman in Mark’s Gospel—the woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years. She instinctively knew—had faith—that if she touched Jesus’s clothes, she would be cured. She didn’t hope she would be healed; she didn’t wish she’d be cured. She knew.

And what did Jesus do? He knew someone who had faith had touched him. He was “aware at once power had gone out from Him” (Mark 5: 30). He stopped and addressed the woman who had unwavering faith and told her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction” (Mark 5: 34).

So, how do we develop our faith and believe what Wisdom tells us is our birthright? How do we develop the faith that the woman in Mak’s Gospel had?

Time.

It takes time to get to know the other person in any relationship. People in Jesus’s day didn’t have the distractions of the internet and cell phones. People who wanted to communicate actually had to talk to one another. Either that or hire a scribe and send a very expensive letter to the other person. The two people could look into each other’s eyes and read each other’s experiences, tone of voice, and excitement levels. They became familiar with the other person. They got to know them and their ways.

Getting to know God is the same. We have to give God our time, give Him our conversations, and get to know who He is by reading stories about Him. We need to stop living in an “i” world, as in iPhone, iPad, iBook, etc. and the other “I” world— “I want this, and I want that, and I won’t do what you want because it isn’t what I want.”

We live in a we world. A world where we take the time, and we talk to God. We listen to God, and we get to know Him for ourselves. When you take the time, your faith will grow. Then you can ask someone who doesn’t believe, “So, how do you know? Have you taken the time to find out?”

Oh, and Jim… He’s now living in a monastery in western Oregon. He took the time, began to listen, and yes turned “I” into “we.”