Faith, Pass it On!
Young Tim was a lucky boy. Or should I say blessed? Yes, blessed is much more accurate. He had a mother whose relationship with Jesus was real and alive. His grandmother too. Sadly, we know nothing of his father’s faith. Since he’s never mentioned, it’s not too far-fetched to assume he was not a man of faith.
But back to Tim and his mother, Eunice, and grandmother, Lois. These two matriarchs (and I call them that because they do indeed appear to have been the spiritual head of their families) passed on a living faith to young Tim.
Here’s how Paul describes it - I remember your honest and true faith. It was alive first in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice. And I am certain that it is now alive in you also. (2 Timothy 1:5, NIRV)
Alive. That’s what faith is. A living fire burning brightly in our spirit. The Bible warns us not to quench that fire (I Thessalonians 5:19) but to fan it into flame. (2 Timothy 1:6)
Recently, I referred to an article by Emma Cooper, entitled, “Anything But Christian: Why Millennials Leave The Church.” We want Jesus. And we can’t find him in your churches, writes Emma.
“Jesus Where Are You?”, is the title of my post, in which Emma’s words appear. Like the failed advertising campaign of the now-dead Oldsmobile car company - This is not your father’s Oldsmobile, the institutional church today is not passing a Eunice-and-Lois-living-faith to the next generation of would-be Christians.*
An emphasis on a living, personal faith has been replaced with an obsession with “right” doctrine that borders on bibliolatry. Survival in the smaller, dying churches and empire-building in the mega-churches is leaving seekers like Emma asking, Where are you, Jesus? And the spiritually adulterous relationship between Christianity and worldly politics is poisoning our witness, which should be pointing people to Christ, not the sinful, broken, and morally bankrupt leaders in our day on both the Left and Right.
No wonder these newer generations are rejecting Christianity. We’re offering them dead works in a culturally bound religion built on doctrinal and political dogma rather than Jesus.
Galatians 5:6 tells us that “in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
Circumcision encompasses tradition (it goes back to Abram in Genesis 17), law (as given in Leviticus), and culture (it distinguished Jews from Gentiles). These three things, tradition, law, and culture are all temporal. Not a single one is eternal in nature. This is why they are said to have “no value.” In other words, they are worthless.
The living faith found in Jesus cannot be passed on through these things. Love is the only wineskin for the new wine of the good news of the kingdom of God. And that love, as sincere as it may be, is hard to receive when it’s packaged in a culturally bound religion that robs it of its eternal value.
It is up to each of us as disciples of Christ to pass on a living faith to others. Let’s not quench faith’s flame by ascribing to a Christianity focused on worldly, temporal, and fleeting things but rather one focused on the eternal things of God’s kingdom.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18, NIV)
In Christ,
Dan
*I mention that the institutional church is not passing a living faith to the next generation of would-be Christians. To be clear - institutions neither possess faith nor pass it to others. They do, however, shape the life and witness of those in the institution. And much of the institutional church today shapes its member’s loyalty to the institution - its doctrine, survival, and politics - at the expense of a living faith in Christ in whose light and truth all these things pale and, in time, fade away.
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