Welcome to the Christian Faith

by Christopher L. Webber

Overview

A foundational volume for seekers in formation programs and a “refresher” study volume for individuals and congregational study groups.

We live in a world increasingly separated from the Christian tradition and the basic understanding of the faith that previous ages might have taken for granted. The voices of faith seem increasingly strident and off-putting to many. There is a need for a calmer, basic introduction to faith that recognizes the value of doubt and the questions raised in a secular society.

A systematic introduction to Christianity for newcomers needs to begin with a discussion of faith itself and then move on to a discussion of such Christian basics as God, Trinity, Church, sin, atonement, prayer, and Christian living.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819227430
Publisher:	Church Publishing, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/01/2011
Series:	Welcome to
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Christopher L. Webber, a graduate of Princeton Universityand the General Theological Seminary in New York, is an Episcopal priest who has led urban, rural, and overseas parishes. He is the author of several books, including Welcome to Christian Faith,Beyond Beowulf, and A Year with American Saints, co-authored with Lutheran Pastor G. Scott Cady. Webber grew up in Cuba, New York, and lives in San Francisco.

Read an Excerpt

Welcome to the Christian Faith

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By Christopher L. Webber

Morehouse Publishing

Copyright © 2011 Christopher L. Webber
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2743-0

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Chapter One

Believing

Believing Is a Verb

Who is God? Who am I?

One of the first words a child learns to say is, "Why?" Other animals, so far as we can tell, never ask that. They are what they are and they do what they do. Life, for them, is not complicated. Human beings, on the other hand, feel a need to know, to understand why we are here and how we should therefore act.

The American folksinger Odetta sang a lullaby that went, "Why and why and why and why; why and why and why," and continued, "Because, because, because, because; good night, good night!" Parents do get tired of having to explain everything and sometimes children get tired of asking. We all can get tired of asking our questions, and simply accept the statement we heard as children, "That's just the way it is." That's unfortunate. We were designed to ask and look for answers and the search for answers leads us finally to issues of faith.

Many questions, of course, have simple, logical answers:

"Why should I eat my spinach?"

"You should eat your spinach so you will get your vitamins and grow strong."

Other questions can be answered by scientific investigation:

"Why are there stars?"

"There are stars because there was an enormous explosion thirteen or fourteen billion years ago that produced clouds of energy that formed the stars and galaxies and planets.

"Why does water boil?"

"Water boils because heat causes the liquid to expand and turn into steam."

All this is useful, but leaves the ultimate "why" questions still unanswered. To say that I am here because a male and female united to produce a child is true enough as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough for most of us.

Why Believe?

Why are we here? Is the world just a random collision of atoms, or is there a plan and a purpose to it all? Science has no answers to that kind of question, leading some to think that means there are no answers, nor is there any plan or purpose; that everything we see is the result of a random chain of events. But the lack of a scientific answer does not necessarily mean that there are no answers. A lot of the decisions and commitments we make are and always have been "unscientific." I will decide to become a farmer rather than a doctor, or a computer programmer rather than a stock broker, because something deep within leads me in that direction. I could go to a guidance counselor and take tests that would give me a more scientific basis for my choice, but most of us will let our own instincts guide us. So, too, in committing myself to another person in marriage, I could—and should—seek counseling and perhaps take personality tests to look for compatibility factors, but the final decision—and the success of that commitment—will still come from somewhere deep within that leads me to believe that this is right for me. We believe and therefore we act.

But why do we believe? Here we are on very different ground than a scientist would be. The scientist is curious and conducts experiments to see what happens and why it happens. She applies heat to water and notices that it boils. She does it again with the same result. When it continues to happen, she proposes a theory: "Heated water boils." Other scientists can then test her theory by repeating the experiment. Believing is not like that. Believing, first of all, is personal: it's not about a stove and a pot of water. It's about me, and about what I choose to do. Why do I choose to believe?

Believing Is about Relationships

"Believe" is a verb, and a verb usually has both a subject and an object. Believing is something human beings do, and it has an object because believing is about a relationship. Sometimes, of course, we use the verb "believe" to express a hunch or an informed guess. We say things like, "I believe it will rain tomorrow." But that is not really believing. Believing has to do with confidence in someone: that they are real and can be trusted in a relationship. That sort of believing is based on instinct and experience.

Still, there is something more involved. We seem to have a need for such relationships. Human beings, the scientists would say, are "social animals"; we tend to form communities and work together toward common goals. In that shared life, we are idealists. We look for people who have skills and qualities that seem to enrich our lives. Most people eventually form an exclusive relationship with another who seems to embody our highest ideals. Yet, if we are honest, we know that we are always disappointed to some degree. Whether partners or presidents, we learn again and again that the other is also human. We have an unsatisfied yearning for something more.

In the early years of the Christian church, a man named Augustine said that God has made us to be in relationship with God, and "our hearts are restless" until they find rest in that relationship. More recently, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal said that each person has an emptiness in the heart that they try in vain to fill; in other words, there is an emptiness within us that requires a relationship with God to be satisfied. We cannot, by definition, prove that such a psychological need exists. We have only our own experience to guide us, but most people do have such a longing.

Many people, of course, will deny that they have such a longing, even when it is obvious through their actions that they are trying to satisfy some kind of need. We see billionaires trying to make more billions, computer owners trying to move up to the latest technology, and parents trying to get their children into the best schools. There are even those who are constantly trying to find new and better techniques of meditation. Our hearts do, indeed, seem restless and unsatisfied. Perhaps what we are really seeking is a relationship with God to satisfy that innate human need.

But if we do have such a need for a relationship with God, does it necessarily follow that we want to believe in God—or would we prefer to know who this God is in some empirical or scientific way? Isn't one result of a world dominated (and threatened!) by scientific achievement a feeling that everything worthwhile is gained by testing and proving so that we know? When we talk about God and the ultimate purpose of life, surely this is an area where we would like to be sure?

In Ingmar Bergman's movie The Seventh Seal, a medieval knight, anguished by doubt, is the central figure. He cries out at one point in the movie, "What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able to? ... Why can't I kill God within me? Why does He live on in this painful and humiliating way even though I curse Him and want to tear Him out of my heart? Why, in spite of everything, is He a baffling reality that I can't shake off?"

That feeling is more modern than medieval. We often look back at the Middle Ages as an "age of faith" and look at our own world as one in which matters of faith are increasingly pushed aside. Yet for all the abundance of material things with which our lives are filled, we seem less satisfied than ever. The medieval mind, less dominated by the achievements of science, could more easily take God's existence for granted while we, who know so much about the universe and live in a world where God seems absent, are more likely to question.

There are, in fact, several ways to answer "the God question." In the first place, if we are investigating Christianity, we are talking about a living relationship, and science has very few certain answers to provide in that sphere. A marriage counselor can analyze the answers to a "compatibility" test, but there no guarantees available that the marriage will work. Parents would like to do the best things for their children, but science can provide no certain answers about what those "best things" are for each individual child. When we talk about the relationship between God and a human being, we are likely to find even less certainty.

In the second place, what would love be like if it were based on certainties? Isn't mystery an important part of the love relationship? Can you imagine being in love with someone whose responses were always predictable?

In the third place, who are we to expect to understand the ultimate power in the universe? Few of us can really understand even Einstein's general theory of relativity, and here we are discussing something far beyond that. Who are you, God asked Job, to speak to your Creator? "Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?" (Job 40:2).

Two Kinds of Knowing

Given, then, our human limitations, we might begin with this question: "What can we know and how do we know it?" We hear a great deal about the "conflict" between science and religion. But there is no need for a conflict if each respects the realm of the other. A scientist, in fact, will often proceed in faith in the early stages of a project. She believes she is on the right track and tests to prove it. In matters of religion, on the other hand, we are right to proceed by reason and logic as far as we can. We may need at last to act in faith when we have gone beyond what can be tested and demonstrated, but we should not assume science has nothing to teach us or that our minds can be left outside when we go into a church.

Believing is, however, a different way of knowing. Our minds work in ways that are far from fully understood to gain experience and produce sudden insights. Poets and other writers talk about the way their pens (or word processors) produce thoughts they had not known they had until they began to write. They sometimes use the word "revelation" to describe a sudden and unexpected insight that seems to come from outside themselves. Much of the Bible is that kind of writing. The prophets spoke words that came to them "in the spirit." The words were not theirs, but came to them even in spite of themselves. Christians speak of the Bible as "revealed truth" because so much of it comes from that sort of unexpected and unpredictable insight. (The chapter on the Bible will discuss this further.)

In fact, scientists also sometimes proceed by revelation. Einstein spoke of the dreams in which he first came to understand some new aspect of the laws of physics. The human mind works in ways beyond our present understanding to produce these insights or revelations, some of which can later be tested and verified and others of which are not that same kind of truth. Revelations can also, in some cases, be tested and verified by experience, but that is a different kind of proof.

Two aspects of human life seem to be especially involved in this kind of knowledge: an awareness of our failures, and our sense of wonder. It is generally when we think about ourselves that we are struck with an awareness of our failures, and when we think about the created order outside ourselves that we are filled with awe. These may in fact, however, be two sides of the same phenomenon. A great German scholar, Rudolf Otto, spoke of our sense of "creatureliness." That sense of "creatureliness" cuts both ways; it involves a sense of our littleness in the great expanse of the universe that makes us say both "How great Thou art" and also "I repent."

Awe and wonder

The story is told of a bishop who fell into conversation with a man who said, much like Ingmar Bergman's knight, that he wanted a revelation. "Go outside," said the bishop, "on a rainy night and turn your face to the heavens and perhaps something will come to you." Sometime later they met again and the bishop asked whether the man had tried the experiment. "Yes," said the man. "I went outside on a rainy night and turned my face to the sky and the rain ran down my neck and I felt like a fool." "Well," said the bishop, "that's not bad for a first revelation."

The sense of God's greatness and our weakness and foolishness are, indeed, closely linked. But it may be best to begin with God's greatness and the human sense of wonder. Like the question "why?" the sense of wonder is strongest in children. Adults often begin to think that they have "been there, done that" and seen it all before, and so they lose their ability to gaze in wonder not only at the night sky but even at a grain of sand or blade of grass. The wise rabbi Nachman of Breslov once said, "It is forbidden to be old.... For the child knows how to be amazed, everything to him is new—the sky, the sun, the stars, mother, father, the doll. He participates in the biblical statement, 'And God saw everything that He had made and it was very good.' Adults, unfortunately, have ceased to be astounded. They see no mystery; freshness is hidden under names and categories."

To say that our sense of wonder is produced by our awareness of the magnitude of creation and our inability to comprehend so vast a universe is true, but far from the whole story. If it were, it would be rather like the inability of my desktop computer to do the calculations involved in launching a lunar probe. My computer can't handle it, perhaps, but a bigger computer can. The job can be done. Gazing at the night sky, however, whether with the naked eye or the most powerful telescope, is something else again. Perhaps a computer could be imagined with enough processing power to calculate the range and motion of all the objects out there, but something more seems to be involved. We have to ask whether at last there is a reality that cannot be measured because it is literally immeasurable.

In somewhat the same way, it is certainly possible for me to analyze and even duplicate the lines drawn by Picasso or the pigments employed by Rembrandt, but gazing at Picasso's Guernica or Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross is not simply a matter of analyzing or even comprehending the materials involved. I see such works of art and I respond in a way beyond any analysis. I can come back to see them again and again and still learn from them, be moved by them, be challenged and transformed by them. "Awe" and "wonder" are words we use to describe a way of knowing that is real and valid, although far beyond testing and measurement. Any adequate analysis of human life must be able to include those aspects of our experience that are real and that enrich our lives in ways beyond scientific analysis.

Sin

Sin is another subject that must be dealt with more fully later, but it is often—some would say always—an experience that leads to believing. The same vision that looks out at the universe and responds with awe also turns around to look at the self, and responds not simply with a quite inevitable sense of littleness, but also with a sense of moral failure.

Why does morality come into this picture? The sense of awe may be reduced to a simple matter of scale: the universe is so large and we are so small. But the sense of sinfulness is not a matter of scale, of large and small, but of value—and this involves a totally different type of measurement. If a scientist produces inaccurate data, we will look at his results and judge them to be wrong. We might say that the one who produced these figures is a bad scientist, but if the data has been deliberately falsified, we will then say that the scientist is a bad person—and that is a very different matter. What is it that leads us to make such judgments?

The moral sense may, in fact, be easier for a scientist to explain than the sense of wonder. It has survival value. If the members of a tribe can be imbued with a sense of right and wrong, they are more likely to work together in a harmonious fashion; they will be less prone to steal their neighbor's chunk of dinosaur meat or claim the wheel as their own invention when, in fact, it was not theirs. But these would be sins against the social fabric and could be dealt with by a system of fines and other punishments created by the tribe for its own welfare. What we find, however, in human societies everywhere is a sense that such misbehavior is not only a crime but a "sin," an offense against a moral law created by a higher power. Primitive societies have developed a variety of elaborate rituals for placating this power or these powers, including sacrificial offerings that are made to restore harmony not simply, or even primarily, within the human community, but with a spiritual world beyond.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Welcome to the Christian Faith by Christopher L. Webber Copyright © 2011 by Christopher L. Webber. Excerpted by permission of Morehouse Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface....................vii
1. Believing....................1
2. The Bible....................17
3. God....................33
4. Jesus....................46
5. The Trinity....................62
6. Sin and Salvation....................74
7. Worship....................87
8. The Christian Church....................100
9. Being a Christian....................116
Questions for Reflection and Discussion....................131