Faith Is Being Not Doing

No. 101

This week’s article brought to mind what I’d call a fork in the road that I didn’t realize was even there until near the end of 2023. Last year wasn’t when I came to the fork but rather realized I’d passed a fork without knowing it. Talk about a changing frame of reference!

For most of my life, staying with the road metaphor, I’d walked the road with purpose, making decisions at forks when I came to them, assured that if I worked hard, my dreams would come true and I’d get all I desired. I worked hard in the material world that enveloped me, taking to heart a quote from Henry David Thoreau’s that resonated with me, “if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

I’d come quite a way along the road in my two score and ten years, only to be struck by the feeling that I had missed something important in this life. I couldn’t pin point really what it was until last November when reading, and understanding, what Paul wrote in Galatians 2:16, “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”

Though I rarely attended church following my teen years, I don’t think I ever stopped believing in God. In much the same way that I understood the elder son’s actions from the Prodigal Son parable in Luke 15—that I wrote about in “Brother of the Prodigal Son”—I tried to do things right. Not because I loved the Father, but because I had learned, maybe been taught, that by doing things right, which were not necessarily the right things to do, I could earn my way into anything. That was the older brother’s mistake. But with what Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, and to the Romans, was the first time I’d heard and realized more fully that I couldn’t earn my way, in this case, into heaven and God’s acceptance. Our western world’s ideology has us believe we can earn our way to anything. This earning propensity seems now to be epigenetically integrated into our western psyche as though in our DNA, except this earning our way doesn’t work for the greatest of all human journeys into Christ. A journey that is not only for our salvation but for the redemption of our sins, which are impossible not to commit as a human being gifted to live in this existence. This experience of realized truth wasn’t a fork in the road but rather a different route I simply couldn’t see before and had to be shown. I metaphorically had to stop myself where I was now and backtrack. I hadn’t realized what had taken place or when. I’m not completely sure I know now, hence my desire to backtrack to find out, and the reason for writing this article.

In backtracking, instinctually I seemed to know I had to move fast, even faster back up the road than the speed I’d come down it in the first place, which was considerable because as I had always wanted to get where I was going as fast as I could. I was impatient, earning and achieving with each step I took. Although along the way, I noticed a slowing of my momentum, already intuitively knowing something was missing without knowing what that “something” was. I felt it deep in my person, in my heart. As I backtracked, I kept looking on each side of this road. What had I missed?

I’d married the love of my life. We’d raised two wonderful kids. I had a loving family. Also, I had the material stuff: the house, the car, and the “good” job. But … and that was where I believe the slowing began; something was still missing. What was it? I had no clue.

As I looked back down this metaphoric road in my mind, I could see these things in the distance, on different sides of what I saw as a dirt road. Did I have to go that far back? No, I didn’t think so.

That’s when something caught my eye and I turned. There was nothing there but the overgrown growth of a forest. I was sure I’d seen something but looked back down the road I was backtracking on. Something again caught my eye. I turned again and saw the same thing—nothing—just the sprawling green of an overgrown forest. But as I looked harder and stared at the green longer, I saw more. The side of the dirt road wasn’t continuous but had an open segment like a cement curb would have to allow for a driveway. I stepped towards it as I saw myself standing in the center of the dirt road. The leaves and overgrowth I’d seen alongside the road wasn’t as thick here. In taking another step closer, I could see breaks in the green overgrowth. Then as though a green leafy curtain was suddenly pulled back, another road appeared …

I kept looking and took another step forward. More was revealed. A definite roadway was there. I took a few more steps but then stopped. I began to see many connected arteries to the road, entrances from other directions. I wasn’t the only one who could’ve taken this road or did. Many seemed directed into this road. The overgrowth of the green forest disappeared as did any forest I might have thought was there. I continued my steps and looked from one side of this roadway to the other. I saw my thoughts from the past, maybe dreams I’d forgotten. I saw houses, or parts thereof, where we’d lived. Some were in disarray, leaking ceilings and dilapidated walls. I saw work places in futuristic and advanced settings resembling in some ways places I’d worked with fanciful passageways and modern structures. I saw people I’d known but not seen in years. People of my past. As I looked, it seemed I was familiar with the environments but lost as to where they were or where I was going. I felt no sense of direction. Then, what became apparent, was this was the road I could have taken, the road I would have been on. I took several steps back, off of what had become paved asphalt. I kept walking until I returned to the dirt road I’d been backtracking on.

I saw where I was. This was the fork I didn’t realize I’d come to in years past. This was the fork that changed my frame of reference.

I began my way back down the road I’d so quickly come back up. As I walked slowly, I saw more of what was on the roadside I’d missed on my quick retreat. The Abraham story with Sarah and Hagar and how it had become more than just a story to me but a telling of the frailties of humankind. I remembered this and my awakening to a much larger view of what the story was all about. I wrote about this in “Second Chances.” I next saw the Great Pyramid of Giza and the earth spinning on its wobbly axis of precession that I wrote about in “Pyramids and Precession.” Both had begun to change how I looked at the world. I saw the eye of Horas, and Osiris and Isis. The myths I’d read and written about in “Chaos Searching For Order,” passed by before my eyes. Then a Bible with pages flipping about with the titles of Matthew, Galatians, Job and Joshua, too many to see. I thought of the expression “seeing is believing” and how I’d begun to understand how belief wasn’t necessary after one had seen (“Seeing Is Not Believing”). I’d begun to see the Bible as a full expression of the complete opposite of our material, seeing-is-believing world.

As I continued down the same metaphoric road I’d come back along in what seemed like only minutes before, I remembered how I thought and realized God had created everything. Holes suddenly appear in the road around me. I saw my grandfather come out of one. I could not remember ever having seen him in person. As I looked, I saw his body turn into dust and a mist of air evaporate into nothingness. Out of another hole came planets. I recognized Saturn with its rings, follow by red Mars and a bright orb I couldn’t look at. The next hole was an enlarged molecule of water the size of which I could hold in my hands like I had suddenly shrunk. The molecule revealed a red atom of hydrogen and two blue atoms of oxygen. They grew larger before my eyes, revealing electrons, protons and neutrons. They then burst like bubbles blown from a child’s toy. Then another person emerged from a hole, lecturing on a stage. I couldn’t hear him but knew his words were from Genesis. Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve, Noah, and the Tower of Babel came into my head but not through my ears.

I saw my remembered thoughts appear as many images flooded all around me and I continued up the dirt road. I remembered thinking that all the myths and legends throughout history was God working on us trying to figure out the best way for his creation to exist. I wrote about this in “Created For Us?” Then I saw the words appear before me without the question mark. I began to realize all our history was not God figuring it out. God doesn’t figure out or plan, as both figures and plans change. God doesn’t change. He only designs without mistakes. All our history throughout the world is our human attempt to figure Him out. To better understand our Creator.

Walking still further, I saw into something else, what seemed like nothing. My mind communicated that it was the unconscious part of my brain that words help make sense of. Words were all, both nothing and everything. Then the words of John 1 came into me, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … all things were made through him.”

I stopped. I was back in the present. What I saw, what I heard, what I was beginning to understand, I hadn’t earned. Again, I heard Paul’s words from Galatians, “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” I smiled. I was being not doing, and yet I did.