faith is not a meritorious act

I've been thinking about many of your posts, especially Caron's reflections on the pride we can find in being "saved" (cf. Mandy Moore movie). As both an upstanding Christian at my Christian school (which was, in my view, ever slipping closer to complete depravity) and an upstanding Christian at my secular prep school (already totally lost, of course) I felt a great deal of subtle pride in being a good kid. I think it stemmed from a strong life-of-the-mind and self-consciousness of belief.

In "The Pursuit of God," A.W. Tozer says, "Faith is not in itself a meritorious act; the merit is in the One toward whom it is directed. Faith is a redirecting of our sight ... sin has twisted our vision inward and made it self-regarding."

Sin can twist our vision of our own faith inward, so we focus on our faith as fact, as identity, and as an end, rather than actually directing our actions and thoughts to God. At a conference at Georgetown last week, Evangelicals and Muslims came together and had an honest conversation about the nature of faith and witness. The Muslims exhorted us to think about faith as action, not as belief. Without abandoning the creeds, I think there's some truth to that.

Embarrassment

Several comments have referred to embarrassment, and I’m sensing there is something more to that than the embarrassment that seems quite common in my experience as people recall their own idealizations of what their future lives would be. If you’d be willing, I hope you will talk more about that embarrassment, helping me understand it, maybe helping me feel more properly embarrassed about my own misguided aspirations. I feel mildly embarrassed, for example, when I read a recipe card I wrote for myself in the seventh grade: “Granola,” “From the kitchen of… Mom Crouch.” I envisioned myself as happily married (i.e. having a mother-in-law who would also give me recipes), having and raising children, making a home in all the traditional senses I was raised to believe were the highest goals for a Christian woman to have, even if one found herself married to someone in full-time ministry. These ideals were and still are modeled for me dauntingly by my mother: sewing, cooking, hospitality-oozing, gardening, composting, servant-hearted, minister and Bible college professor’s wife. She is incredibly ordinary by all measurements except those who love her, and has been a widow since 1993. She comes from tough old stoic Norwegian stock of the Lake Wobegon variety, plenty of spiritual weaknesses without a doubt, but no time for naval gazing, as she is too busy responding practically to the needs she is presented with in her community, with hardly a self-conscious thought that that is what she is doing. I shall always wish I was more like her.

None of that has turned out to be my life. Instead I am an artist, far too prone to naval-gazing than is good for me, with a doctoral degree in voice performance. These were not even presented as options in my upbringing. The only really good use for playing the piano, which I was really good at and loved, was being a minister’s wife, an idea I resented deeply and rejected bitterly. For years growing up I found myself resisting the sense of guilt I felt sitting in numerous missions conferences, hearing challenge after challenge to go overseas, to give up everything including talents (I’m still mystified about the logic of that) and serve God somewhere where His name was not known, and knowing I didn’t feel called to do it. I was honest enough to know that if I were to respond to such appeals, it would be for all the wrong reasons, and I became increasingly convinced I should be a musician and a teacher, a calling of which I’m still convinced. I never spoke of these ambitions to anyone, and plenty of people assumed when I went to university to study music (which they felt I already knew plenty about), that having had no luck finding a husband in Bible college, I was dubiously trying my luck farther a field. I found these assumptions deeply offensive, took me some places I deeply regret, and it is not without pain that they have all given up on my matrimonial prospects, which are, strangely enough, not dead in my own mind, but no longer define me. The fact is that I love the people who made these assumptions, and they made valuable contributions to my life which will be rewarded by God I have no doubt, even though their categories and approach to spirituality became increasingly dissatisfactory to me. This conversation couldn’t even happen with many of them. Hence, I’m having it with you.