Deepest Faith

Sunday, August 23, 2026

There is currently  a bunch of restoration work going on at Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.  Subsequently a bunch of articles have been appearing about new archeological evidence supporting biblical narratives.  Similarly, there is new evidence that being religious is good for you mental health.  All this got me thinking about why, fundamentally, I am a Christian.

I have been a Christian for a long time – a very long time at this point in my life.  Early in my faith journey, the rationality of faith mattered a great deal to me.  I devoured books on apologetics.  I scrutinized all I was taught in school to discern truth from anti-God speculation.  I argued with professors and philosophers alike.  I could be a jerk.  My early faith was deeply intellectual, I read theologians.  I pondered the problem of pain.  I explored much like the story the Vice President tells he did in his new book.  I thought my mind was the key to God’s heart.  After all, did Paul not write, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

But as life has proceeded, those things matter less and less while my faith has grown and grown.  I am far from the destination, but I think I am closest to the man God intends for me to be that I have ever been.  There has been so much life between then and now.  There have been events mystical and wonderful – some of which I have written about.  My faith has grown to be less about what I think about God, and more about God Himself.

That same Paul wrote:

And when I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come as someone superior in speaking ability or wisdom, as I proclaimed to you the testimony of God.  For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.  I also was with you in weakness and fear, and in great trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of mankind, but on the power of God.

I look around me at the world today, it seems so wrong.  So much of that wrongness is rooted in the retreat of the church from our public square.  And then I wonder if that retreat is not in some part due to the fact that the church relied on the wisdom of mankind rather than the power of God.

Let’s go to church this morning seeking God’s power, not our wisdom.