5.1 What is Authentic Faith?

I can find faith hard to talk about sometimes… One of the reasons is that there’s so many negative stereotypes associated with people of faith. It’s painful that some of the stereotypes are right on the money thanks to a few extremists and fanatics who have done and still do atrocious things in what they claim to be the name of God. Christianity specifically has its own stereotypes, some that I personally try not to be defined by, like Mr. Nice Guy. Now there’s nothing wrong with being nice, in fact, please be nice! but if I’m just a nice religious person who shows no real emotion or passion for what's right then that’s not great. Or if I’m Mr. Nice and get walked all over and show no back bone then that's not great either. This common misconception of the Christian faith can be best summed up by Ned Flanders, from the long running cartoon, The Simpsons. He is the ultimate super Mr. Religious Nice Guy (at least on the outside) on inside he is constantly bottling up his anger and rage, against Homer, and is always on the verge of exploding. That’s not a healthy way to live. Faith - in the way Jesus lived it - is something that’s authentic, something that’s challenging, something that’s adventurous! A life in where your desires and emotions are not a secret to be hidden but an energy that can be used to bring about change. For example, my faith helps me to express the emotion of Anger. Now we usually think of anger as a selfish, and destructive emotion - and it often can be - but anger in and of itself is neither a good nor a bad thing. What matters is what makes you angry and what you do with that anger. Do you lose the head and fly into a furious rage when somebody puts too much cheese into your chicken roll? That’s unhealthy anger. You should look into that. But there are things that we should be angry about, like inequality, injustice, poverty, oppression! When I read about the life of Jesus, he challenged these things head on! And he wasn’t just gentle, injustice made him angry, but his expression of anger always brought about change. Early in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus got angry at the religious leaders because they had their belief system backwards. They were convinced that no work could be done on the Sabbath, the day of rest, even to the point of healing someone. They seemed happy enough to let the needy suffer on, when they knew full well that Jesus had the power to heal. So, one Sabbath day, when Jesus saw a man with a crippled hand and went to heal him, it made the religious leaders whisper judgmentally to each other and look for an opportunity to condemn him. This made Jesus angry, and rightly so, because their understanding of obeying the law was more important than loving and helping those in need. But their resistance didn’t stop Jesus, He went on to heal the man. This is the interesting thing about anger and love. Jesus’ anger is expressed in love towards the man who needs healing. And Jesus’ love is expressed in anger towards the Pharisees. By getting angry at them and defying them, he is holding up a mirror to them and basically saying, ‘Look what you have become! You were made for more than this!’ And this is not the only time that Jesus got angry. When he came across people using the Temple, God’s house of prayer, as a market place, and as a shopping centre, instead of a place of worship, he got angry. He flipped over the tables they were using and cleared everyone out. This isn’t saying that Jesus lost control or that he was anti-Business. These profiteers had lost the run of themselves and it was the poor who were paying the price. They were getting in the way of people trying to connect with God in a very special place. Jesus was passionate about not letting anything get in the way of people trying to connect with God or let anything get in the way of Him expressing his love for those who needed it the most. Mr. Nice Guy might look lovely and religious, but he’s not what Christianity is about. If faith was a swimming pool, he’d be the guy in the Speedo’s the pink arm bands standing on the edge and dipping his toe in. Following Jesus involves all of me and is more like diving in at the deep end.