ENT.6 Faith is a Choice

^“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15

“The next day, John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want? They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “Where are you staying?” “Come,” he replied, “and you will see. So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him.” John 1:35-39

“Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from^[c] faith for his name’s sake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.” Romans 1:5-6

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This is an excerpt from a larger written piece that I have been working on, in which I have been exploring the reality of faith as laid out in the Bible. A faith not merely described as an intellectual choice, but one that is evidenced through life physically in our actions. This excerpt is strictly on the battle of faith, seemingly in opposition to intellectualism, and stems from my personal experience and difficulty wrestling with both faith and doubt. That said, this is written from the perspective of the Christian who struggles with this dilemma in their life, although it may have some use in the discussion broadly of a non-believer's objection to faith as being irrational. That is a conversation and topic with much more to add upon in the future.

What do we do when we are faced with the calling of faith within our lives but are still overwhelmed by doubt and questions about what to believe? This is a very personal question to me in the sense that, truly, I have struggled greatly with doubt and intellectual questioning, which has come in a way between my relationship with God. The fundamental points I have had to wrestle with in my battle between doubt and faith are the ideas of intellectualism as superior to faith or the challenge of what faith looks like in spite of the hardship and difficulty that we face in life. Through all of this, one thing has become abundantly clear to me through my life and through the decisions and stories made and described to us throughout the Bible. Faith in this broken world does not come easy; it is a battle, and it is a choice. 

Faith Does Not Come Easy 

It is no surprise to anyone on this planet when you say that life is not easy, or to say that there are hard things that you will have to face in your life. This is a universal reality of life, but why does it feel like our faith and relationship with God are sometimes the same? The shocker is that it should be! The truth is that we live in a broken world, evidenced by the moral destruction, cruelty, and evil we agree exists around us.  This is true also of our spiritual selves, where we live in a constant spiritual battle with implications far greater than our temporary lives here on earth. There is a tension between our spiritual selves and our physical selves, which are mutually affecting each other, pushing and pulling at our very being. Temptation from evil is real both physically and spiritually within our lives, as even Jesus was tempted by Satan while on this earth (Mathew 4:1-11). These temptations find their way, destructively, into our minds and lives with the intention of standing between our spiritual selves and a relationship with our creator. This is the tension that we feel in opposition to faith. Implied in this are two prolific types of temptations. External temptation and Internal temptation. 

External Temptation 

Why do bad things happen if they lead to a metaphorical wall between ourselves and our relationship with God? This is exactly the question I wrestled with when it came to accepting my faith in spite of the things that have happened in my life. External temptations refer to a plethora of things that we experience from the secularism of modern society, promoting idolatry, hedonism, and selfishness, to the prolific spread of negative misinformation promoting doubt and fear, and even the influence of others close around us. However, one of the most powerful of these external temptations that has an effect on our faith is the personal and difficult things each of us experiences in life, often outside of our control. It is easy for these things to build that wall between ourselves and God, and we begin asking questions such as “Why is God doing this to me?” or “Why is God allowing this to happen?” Despite this, it is clear God never directly tempts you or puts you in a position where you are motivated to sin (James 1:13). Instead, God allows us to be tempted (Job 1:12) so that we may develop perseverance and receive His reward (James 1:2-4,12). Therefore, we are asking dangerously wrong questions, positioning our emotions and directing our hurt toward God Himself. This is the real temptation, as these are the building blocks of the wall between ourselves and God, as is true with any relationship. It is, however, through temptation that we grow stronger, and this development is an outcome of our perseverance despite the temptations. Therefore, the external temptations of sin within our lives are useless or detrimental to the development of our faith unless we perceive them under the presupposition of what God says that they are, in which they are then strengtheners of our faith. It is through perseverance and perception of the truth of external temptations that allows us to turn those temptations into the good God has intended. Apart from the understanding that testing develops perseverance of faith, testing and temptation will only serve as building blocks in a wall we build between ourselves and our relationship with God.

Internal Temptation

Doubt and questioning, however, within one’s head, the validity and truth of their faith is what I consider to be internal temptation. We are driven by the selfish desires of our own flesh, which is directly contrary to the desires of the spirit (Galatians 5:17), and therefore, we are at constant conflict between our spiritual selves and physical selves. Naturally, we are prone, especially today, to doubt and question our own beliefs, as there is so much change around us and access to tremendous amounts of subjective knowledge and information. This internal temptation of doubt is not new today; even Thomas, an apostle of Jesus, struggled with the internal temptation of doubt (John 20:25). As opposed to external temptations, internal temptations can grow subconsciously and remain undetected for a long time, festering and continually supported by ideas or experiences we go through. Slowly and secretly, they can eat away at the foundations of our faith and relationship with God, causing sensations of distance, emotions of anger, or disconnection. Internal temptations, specifically doubt in religion or in faith itself, can also be so firmly rooted in our minds that they can cause a severe hindrance to the development of faith in the first place. Fundamentally, doubt is the categorical opposite of faith, and therefore, both cannot be entertained consciously within your mind and soul. Faith and doubt are constantly at war for your soul; neither can exist truly and fully without the eradication of the other from yourself, which only comes with complete devotion of one’s soul to the other. 

Faith is a Battle 

Spiritually, we recognize that there is a battle between our sinful desires and nature, and the will of God for us within our lives. My favorite demonstration of this in the Bible is Paul’s internal battle with himself over his actions and desires in Romans 7. Paul begins with the statement, “I do not understand what I do.” (Romans 7:15a). To discuss this internal spiritual battle in any other way than this would do it justice, for it is through this exact paradox that Paul draws his frustration. In this opening statement, Paul himself is making clear this division within himself, that there is a part of him that is currently thinking and making this statement, but there is additionally a part of him, his actions, that are separated. He is drawing the distinction between his spiritual self and his physical self, stating that the two do not act in the same way or synonymously with each other. Paul goes on to say, “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7:15b). This here is the spiritual battle of faith that dwells within every one of us, fleshed out in perfectly illustrated frustration from Paul. He continues to vent this frustration in verses 16-20 as he brings to light his desires to do good, but his actions that do not align are overcome by the evil one. It is both a spiritual battle and a physical one. Back and forth must wrestle with both our beliefs and our actions in light of both the external and the internal temptations we experience. Constantly, we will try and constantly, as Paul states, we will fail. It is not the expectation that we will never fail, but rather the perseverance that we continue to fight. Indeed, Paul gives light here to the reality that through the temptations of doubt, which stand as bricks within the wall between our relationship with God, we are in a battle for our souls. We are constantly having to fight against our desires and ways of this world for the glory and the truth of God.

Faith is a Choice

Understanding that faith is difficult and that faith is a battle lends to the foundation of the idea that faith is a choice. Faith is a conscious choice that we must make day in and day out, despite the temptations and doubts that this world continues to throw our way. The very essence of the idea that faith and doubt are categorically opposed and that only one can reign in our hearts and minds means that we must choose. Jesus tells us this when talking to his disciples. He states, ^"Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” (Mathew 21:21-22). Does this mean that all of our doubts should disappear on their own once we accept the lifestyle of faith? No, rather, we are called to choose to have faith despite our doubts, not in the absence of them. We are all in the battle between faith and doubt; we can not ignore it, and however we decide to move forward, it is our choice in doing so.

We are given the choice of faith in a way to preserve our dignity and free will, gifted to us from the Father. In this same way, we must remember that this is indeed a gift not to be forgotten or taken lightly, but to be added to the list of praises we give God. Jesus himself demonstrates this idea that faith is a choice in asking the disciples, “Where is your faith?” in Luke 8:25, after they woke Him due to doubt and fear of a storm while sailing on a lake. The disciples, like us, defaulted to their natural habit of doubt and fear. They chose to allow themselves to be overcome by this doubt; despite all that they knew and had seen about Jesus, in this moment, they became afraid. It is therefore equally true to say that both the ascension to faith over fear and doubt within a person is a choice, as it is to say that the regression from faith to doubt and fear is also a choice. In this way, there is always a choice, allowing all individuals to be answerable for their actions as they are either actions from faith or actions from doubt. This is exactly what Jesus criticizes the disciples for, as their actions, waking Jesus up on the boat, are a representation of their doubt and fear, not their faith. So, as for us today, our actions in response to temptations of this world are either out of an accession to faith over doubt and fear or out of a regression to doubt and fear instead of faith. The choice is ours.