Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor
June 02, 2008
(more sermons)

Reason and faith

Today at Corinth we honor the achievements of twenty-five members of our church family who have reached milestones in their academic careers. Your presence today allows us to recognize and rejoice with you over a fleeting moment of your life (having someone hand you a diploma) that represents years of effort and perseverance. We are proud to be your church family.

Most of you (though not all) received your education at an institution that has formally divorced reason and faith. I didn't say that you personally have made that divide, but your institution has. Overwhelmingly you were taught, either explicitly or implicitly, that the classroom is not the place to witness to your faith, explain your faith, or even integrate your faith. In most cases your teachers did not oppose faith -- they just ignored it. If there was any connection between your academic discipline and your relationship to God, it was because you were intentional about it.

It's not my purpose today to rant and rave about the separation of church and school. I simply want to recognize it, and then to point out that it has not always been so. Churches educated children and youth long before governments did. Hickory's first school, for example, was founded and led by Corinth's first pastor, Jeremiah Ingold. A surprising number of institutions of higher learning were founded not only by churches, but for the purpose of training clergy, who were normally the best educated people in their congregations.

Daniel Taylor points out in an excellent little book, The Myth of Certainty, that this divorce of reason and faith has created -- at least in some places -- two subcultures within modern society that avoid and distrust one another. One is the subculture the church, particularly the more conservative church, and the other is the subculture of secularism -- which can be everything from the university to the news and entertainment media. Both are not only absolutely certain they have the truth -- but both are equally sure the other has little to offer.

All this leads to doubt, doubt that runs both ways. A person who grows up in the sheltered world where his or her only influences are parents, Sunday School teachers, and pastors -- maybe even teachers in a faith-based school -- doubts that the secular world has anything significant to offer. On the other hand, a person who has lived in, or transitioned to, the subculture of secular education starts to think, "There are all these brilliant people around me who, if they ever think about God, certainly don't talk about him. Therefore God must be, at best, irrelevant to the pursuit of meaning and happiness."

And that pursuit is, is it not, the often unspoken but sometimes blatantly articulated quest of American culture. "Be happy." "Follow your dreams." "To each his own." "Find what's right for you." Be yourself." "I did it my way." They are all cliches you can't trust.

These cliches span across all subcultures to express the American dream -- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In a nation that cherishes individual freedom as its core value, we have come to think of both school and church as stepping stones toward personal fulfillment. We choose churches and choose schools based on our perception of their contribution to our pursuit of happiness. Sometimes that pursuit is counterproductive.

Doubts

The subject of today's sermon is doubt in its various forms. I asked the Consistory this past Tuesday to write down some of their doubts. Here's a sampling --

• Political doubt -- whether either Republicans or Democrats can solve problems like the energy crisis.
• Personal doubt -- I am not sure what is in store for my future.
• Religious doubt -- Where is God when people are really hurting -- especially when the community rejects or ignores them?
• Intellectual doubt -- How life will play out on earth.

I asked them about their doubts because of a sentence in our Scripture text today. John writes in 1 John 3:19-20, "This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us." The Message paraphrase takes that phrase about having our hearts condemn us and renders it, "the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism."

"Doubt" is an umbrella term for asking questions like, "Am I doing the right thing? Have I bought into a lie? As I climb up my ladder, how sure am I that what's at the top is even something I want to reach? Am I missing something? Have I found meaning, or will it continue to elude me? Why does everyone else seem to be so much more certain what God thinks than I am?"

I find it interesting that John should identify with doubt. His opponents when he was writing 1 John were early Gnostics, whose very name meant "know-it-alls." They were sure of everything, and were quite sure that ultimate knowledge was found outside the church -- in their own version of secularism. While attacking their "myth of certainty" among his opponents John was admitting that inside the church -- maybe even inside him -- there was a prevalence of "debilitating self-criticism."

If we Christians come across as thinking we have all the answers on every subject, it is to our detriment. To be sure, we hold on with stubborn resolve to a core of truth that gives life meaning. That is the subject of next week's sermon.

But for today, John is admitting that doubt is not foreign to the Christian experience. Daniel Taylor says doubt is far more common within the church than we want to admit, and sometimes (he says this is equally true in the university as in the church), we simply mask our doubts by associating with others equally willing to deny them.

Isn't that odd? What we should find here in the church is a "place where the burden of doubt can be shared." Taylor reminds us that doubt is so normal to every life, that we should be able to deepen our community by exposing those doubts to one another. We often find, he notes, that our doubts come and go. Therefore, "Do not whip the mule that has collapsed under the burden. Do what you can to lighten the burden and wait patiently until I have regained my strength. And someday I will do the same for you."

The prescription

This connection between doubt ("debilitating self-criticism," or some other form) and community was new and fresh to me in this text this week. I started out preparing this sermon as the second of three "tests" that John gives in this letter for how you know if you are a true Christian.

Test 1 (last week): Do I do what is right? Test 3 (next week)? Do I hold on to what is true? Test 2 (today): Do I love my brothers and sisters in Christ? If these tests sound familiar, it's because John cycles through them several times in his letter. We've seen them all before and we will see them again.

The unique twist for this section of John's letter is the connection between loving your brother and overcoming doubt. When he says, "This is how we set our hearts at rest in his presence," the "this" is loving others. The community of faith is John's prescription for doubt.

How tragic, then, that we run from community when we suffer from doubt! We retreat to our private thoughts. We want to be alone. We resist vulnerability. We become more self-absorbed. I'm thinking of someone right now who's part of our church family who runs to the church when things are going well and disappears when life crumbles.

John says, "No!" Love is the answer to doubt. Invest yourself in the community of faith, in the body of believers. And he is very specific about what that looks like --

• Excavate envy (v. 12). It was the root sin that led to Cain's murder of Abel. When you recognize in yourself an all-consuming desire for what someone else has or achieves, name it for what it is and choose to focus on your own blessings.
• Sacrifice for someone (v. 16). Remember what Jesus did for you. Look for someone to whom you can give, or whom you can serve, with no expectation of getting anything back. Look especially to those who are your "brothers and sisters" in Christ.
• Show mercy (v. 17). The phrase translated "has no pity" in this verse means literally "closes his bowels" -- only we would say "heart" instead of "bowels." If you have a way to help someone, open your heart.
• Love with action (v. 18). Do something for someone. Don't just talk about it. Choose a concrete, specific way to display love.

John says when you do this -- choose against hate, sacrifice for someone, show mercy with intent and specificity -- "This then is how we...set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us."

Those cliches you can't trust -- follow your dreams, be happy, find what's right for you -- living by them will lead to a life of doubt. The monster of self has an appetite that is never satisfied. You will always wonder, even when you achieve all your goals to be happy, "Is this all there is?"

But there is a better way, a higher way. It is to recognize the futility of the self-fulfillment quest, which leads only to frustration. It is to be real about life within the community of Christ. It is to walk a shared path of faith in a life of sacrifice, in compassion, and in generosity, you find yourself on a shared path of faith. Amen.

Copyright 2008 by Robert M. Thompson, Pastor. Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, Copyright 1978 by New York International Bible Society.