Would you want to see...

I really like the show "The Voice."  A lot.  I laugh at the judges' banter.  I do not much laugh these days.  And I like the music.  That is rather odd because much of it is of a kind I care not for ... or rather cared not.  Terry McDermott from last season changed my mind where rock music is concerned.  This season, just barely underway, already had a favorite song of mine.

I first heard the song, "One of Us" as the theme song for the television show "Joan of Arcadia."  It was a show that I liked, despite the theology, for the pause it gives about our notions of God.  The song, too, gives pause.  I have already downloaded the full length version of Sarah Simmons' rendition from this season of "The Voice," but you can watch her shortened audition rendition here.

It is the second verse I like ... really like.

If God had a face, what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like Heaven and in Jesus and the Saints
And all the Prophets and...

If. If ... then.

I happen to think that when it comes to the Church in America today, this verse both would make many rather uncomfortable and mirrors how many approach the Bible.  Our human reason likes reign.  And so we also like to pick and choose the things we think and believe about the Bible.

What a question this is!  Would you want to see God's face if it meant that you had to believe everything?  

Oh, how the Church argues about what the Bible says and means!

Oh, how even the Lutheran Church argues about what the Bible says and means even though we have the pure doctrine in a compendium elucidated in a manner such that a young adult to an elderly person can read and understand!

We love our human reason.

Whilst thumbing through the Christian Book of Concord (BOC) looking for something to post on my Snippets blog, I came across the following:

Here one sees how blind reason gropes around in matters relating to God.  According to its own imagination, reason seeks consolation in its own works and cannot remember Christ and faith. ~BOC, SA, III, III, 18.

Amongst the texts of the BOC are many portions speaking of human reason.  In a nutshell, human reason has no place in spiritual matters.  Here is a collection of quotes about human nature.  Here is a collection about works.  Here is a collection of quotes about justification.  However, I believe that all you really need to read is the Second Article of the Augsburg Confession.  There we learn the why.  But we humans have this rather profound and abiding proclivity to forget about, to dismiss, the fullness of Original Sin, the depth of which is shown here in this collection of quotes.  

Today (now yesterday, though today for me still), I read a post thread on Facebook about infant baptism.  Primarily the arguments against follow: 1) infants have yet to commit sin; 2) infants are not able to choose Jesus as their savior; and 3) baptism is an ordinance not a Sacrament (an act of worship by humans rather than the work of God for humans).  All of those arguments are based on what the Bible says, does not say, etc.  Those against infant baptism are skilled at choosing which verses to keep and which to disregard.  But, to my theologically untrained mind, the whole matter boils down to Original Sin.  Either you believe in Original Sin and acknowledge that man cannot fear, love, or trust God without the gift of faith because of his sinful nature or you do not believe in Original Sin and instead hold that man chooses to accept faith of his own reason, will, nature, flesh.

It has to be either or.  

It cannot be both.  

They are diametrically opposed doctrines that effectively cancel each other out.

To me, in my reading of the latter section of Part IV of the Large Catechism, this is the crux of Luther's argument.  And yet, even as I read it, I wonder why the need for that section.  In the Large Catechism, he is not writing about the teachings of adversaries.  He is writing to Lutherans, how to teach the Confession of the pure doctrine.  And the Augsburg Confession clearly lays out the foundation of faith, how we are justified and how we are sanctified.  All is the work of our Triune God.  All of it.  Every single bit of it.  In fact, in laying out the Confession, Original Sin comes before Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the rest.  The First Article is our Triune God.  Next comes Original Sin.  That huge, impossible, and insurmountable obstacle/barrier between man and God.  Enter the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the rest.  Why, then, do we even need to discuss, much less argue about infant baptism?  If we are sinners, we must receive faith in order to believe, to understand, to fear and love and trust God.  If we are sinners, we are blind to the Promise.  So, age matters not.  Age and an increase of knowledge or wisdom matters not.

If we are not actually sinners in our nature, in our flesh, then the whole birth, live, passion, and death of Jesus Christ is moot.  Each time we argue against baptism being a Sacrament, being the saving work of God, we are arguing against Jesus, against the cross.  Simple.  Nothing difficult to understand.  Either you believe in Original Sin or you do not.

If God had a face, what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like Heaven and in Jesus and the Saints
And all the Prophets and...

To glimpse even the merest sliver of what Original Sin means, is within us, is to look upon a blackness so complete that there is no room for a single thought of the value of reason or will with regard to faith, no room for choosing to believe, for accepting a personal savior, for beginning a "relationship" with Jesus.  But there in lies the rub.  If we look upon our sin, we cannot look to ourselves for strength, courage, belief.  If we look upon ourselves, all we see is hopelessness and helplessness.  Who wants to see that?

If God had a face, what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like Heaven and in Jesus and the Saints
And all the Prophets and...

We do not want to look upon our sin.  Nor do we want to look upon the face of God, to look upon the whole of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, because we will not find ourselves there.  

In a way, I also believe this unwillingness to truly look upon the fullness, the depth of Original Sin is why we have Lutherans who pick and choose amongst the texts of Confessions for that which they will believe, teach, and confess. To look upon Original Sin means to turn away from reason.  To look upon Original Sin is to look upon the cross.  Neither of those leaves one comfortable.  Reason is the comfort of our flesh.  We hunger for it.  We strive after it.

But, to me, all that is a puzzle.  A genuine, bonafide, inexplicable, unfathomable puzzle.  For, seriously, why in the world would any Christian want his faith to depend on his reason, will, dedication, devotion, worship?  Why?  Why in the world would you want failure, doubt, despair?  I have lived there.  No, it is better to say that I have spent years dying there.

Yet, even in finding the pure doctrine, I struggle with the enormity of the true Gospel, of what it means, with how it obliterates nearly everything I have been taught about faith and "Christian living." I struggle and doubt and worry and fear.  Even in this post.  Even in admitting I like a song that is not a "Christian" song.  Shame.  Fear.  Guilt.  Yet really what I am admitting is that I find comfort in the lyrics, in the reminder of our weakness and of the fullness, the whole, of looking upon the cross.  I find comfort in the thought of looking upon the face of God and believing everything. 

Of late, I have begun to wonder if part of the problem is the notion of "Christian" living.  We try to describe it, to define it, to build parameters that become guidelines that turn in to Law.  Law we then use to crush and to kill our brothers and sisters in Christ who are not abiding by our "Christian" living Law.  

The truth ... the actual, veritable Truth ... is that I am baptized and so therefore am living each day in Christ.  That means, this life where I am struggling and doubting, where I am weak and ill, where I am confused and lost, is "Christian" living.  It is not being good or moral or loving or worshipful enough.  It is being baptized.  Period.  

• Being baptized means being forgiven and receiving faith.  
• Receiving faith means bearing fruit.
• Bearing fruit means the Holy Spirit working the Word and Christ's body and blood according the will of God as He plans and purposes and prepares for His creation, for you.

There is no consolation of self in any of that.  In a way, then, is not the battle against--the vitriol against and derision of--infant baptism the rallying cry for the need to insert reason into the matters of God, the matters of faith?  

Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!