The Difference Between Faith and Fideism

God’s Faithfulness

Junk Drawer – Previous Publications
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, 01 April 2012

“If we are faithless, He will remain faithful, for He cannot disown Himself” (2 Tim. 2:13, NIV).

When we first catch a glimpse of the faithfulness of God, faith is the natural response. Faith is not the ladder which we climb in order to discover the faithfulness of God. It is the other way around. God is faithful, period. When we see that, faith is the natural response.

A misunderstanding concerning this shows up in many of our expressions. One that pertains to those in Christian work is the expression “living on faith.” If that were strictly true, many of us would be in trouble. We do not “live on faith,” we “live on faithfulness.”

By saying this, I do not mean to belittle the importance of faith. It is very important. But it is not the foundation, the faithfulness of God is. By exercising faith, we build on the foundation. However, we cannot begin building until we see that the foundation is really there. Once we understand that, it creates in us a natural desire to build. Our faith then gets to work.

There are many ways to see the faithfulness of God. One is to look at His dealings with men in history. Another is to count on God’s promises in Scripture. Many of them are explicitly linked to the faithfulness of God: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful . . .” (1 John 1:9); “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful . . .” (1 Cor. 10:13); “He will keep you strong to the end . . . God . . . is faithful” (1 Cor. 1:8,9).

The more we meditate on and consider the faithfulness of God, the more we will desire to commit ourselves to that faithfulness. That desire is faith.

We know from Hebrews 11:6 that faith is necessary to please God. If I see His faithfulness, I respond in faith. If I respond in faith, I please God. But whether I please Him or not, He remains faithful. He cannot disown Himself.

However, this is not a blank check to be faithless. It is impossible to count on God’s faithfulness and remain faithless. The only way to remain faithless is to refuse to believe in the faithfulness of God.

Let us turn from our desire to place our faith in our own ability to generate faith. We need to replace it with an increased consciousness of God’s love for us and His faithfulness to us. The result will be a faith that moves mountains.  “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11, ESV).

Originally published in Roots by the River (June/July 1980), a publication of Community Christian Ministries. Originally published, that is, with the exception of the last verse cited, Heb. 11:11. Can’t believe I left that verse out.

Fiduciary Failures

Lords Over Serfs

One of the most offensive odiousnesses of modern politics is the way politicians morph into believing they are “to the manor born”.  This can take many forms, such as what is now termed “troughing”–using extortions from the public via taxation to pay for personal expenses.    Another maddening form is extracting taxes to fund a grand gesture.

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>Faint Heart, Fair Lady 

Political Dualism – Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, October 03, 2010

In that great gallery of the Faith’s heroes, Hebrews 11, we see the same kind of person, over and over again, but different earthly outcomes. Since the city we are seeking, whose maker and builder is God, is not an earthly city, we are given a wide range of possibilities here. Those possibilities include both winning and losing.

There is a certain of servant — a worthless one, to use the words of his master — who wants to stay close to the shore, play it safe, take no great risks, and bury his talent in a napkin. This approach is taken by the cowardly who think their master is a “hard master.”

In the parable of the talents, the risk takers came back with more than they started with, but that doesn’t always happen. The fellow who was given five talents made five more, and the man given two made two more (Matt. 25:14ff). But sometimes in our experience the man with five talents comes back with only three, and a little bit wiser. Nevertheless, the Lord praised the servants who were willing to lose.

Dabney refers somewhere to a pathetic kind of conservatism that has no intention of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. But there is also a kind of conservatism that has no intention of running the risk of success. The same kind of timidity underlies both. But biblical faith always swings for the fence.

And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephtha; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise (Hebrews 11:32-39).

Some conquered kingdoms, and some were sawn in two. Some stopped the mouths of lions, and some didn’t. Some turned armies to flight, and some were marched off to camps by armies. Some quenched the violence of fire, and some were stoned. Some turned five talents into five hundred, while others had their one remaining talent emptied from their pocket before they were tied to the stake. But all of them overcame by faith.

The cowardice that is afraid of success is not biblical faith, and it will be that same lack of faith that, when it comes to the point, refuses to pay the price that a martyr would pay. Faith is willing for earthly success or failure, whatever the Lord has ordained for us. Cowardice is ultimately willing for neither, because cowardice won’t take the risk of failure that is necessary in order for real success to occur. Faint heart, fair lady, and it became a proverb because it is true.

Health and wealthers want only the possibility of success. Doom and gloomers want only the possibility of ongoing failure. But biblical faith knows what it wants, and what it ultimately wants is not in this world anyway. Because the final reward is found in the resurrection, in the city to come, and not here, we are set free to attempt great things here. To different kinds of cowardice this looks positively reckless, but reckless in different ways. Some are afraid that our psalm singing will wake up the lions, while others are afraid that the psalm singing will stop the mouths of those same lions.

In the words of one insightful business executive, we must remember that nothing was ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Working By Faith

Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.
Galatians 6:9

Many start well in the Christian life, with rich hope and glowing ardour, who soon fail. They become discouraged at the hardness and toilsomeness of the way or at the little impression they are able to make on the world, and grow weary. . . .

There are two ways of becoming weary in well-doing. We may be weary in it or of it. And there is an immense difference in the two experiences. The best men may grow weary in their service. Human nature is frail. We are not angels with exhaustless powers of endurance. But we are to guard against growing weary of our great work, as sometimes we are tempted even to be.

“What is the use of serving God?” cries one. “I have tried for years to be faithful to Him, and to live as He would have me to live, but somehow I do not succeed in life. I have no blessing on my work. My business does not prosper. Then there is my neighbour, who never prays, who disregards the precepts of God’s Word, who desecrates the Lord’s Day, whose life is unjust, hard, false and selfish. And yet he gets along far better than I do. What is the profit of serving God?” Many a good man has felt thus in his heart, even if he has not spoken his thoughts aloud.

To all this it may be replied that God’s years are long and He is never in a hurry. As a good Christian man said to a scoffer who boasted that his crops were good though he had never prayed for God to bless them, while the Christian’s, after all his praying, had failed, “The Lord does not always settle His accounts with men in the month of October.”  Besides, worldly prosperity is not always promised, nor is it always a blessing. There come many times in very man’s life when trial is better than prosperity. A little with Heaven’s benefit is better than great gains poisoned by the curse of God. . . .

Everything about the Christian life is difficult of attainment. In the ardour of his youthful zeal and the glow of his yet untried and unbaffled hope, the young Christian is apt to feel that everything is going to yield at once to his strokes. He looks for immediate results in every case. He has large hope and enthusiasm, but has not strong faith. He begins, and soon discovers his mistake. . . . Many people reject the blessings God is sending to their doors. We come to them laden with rich spiritual things, and they turn away to chase some vanishing illusion. We tell them of Christ, and they turn to listen to the siren song that would lure them on the rocks of ruin. That this is disheartening cannot be denied.

But does not God behold our work? Does He not see our toil and our tears? Does He not witness our faithfulness in His service? . . . . “But men are ungrateful.” Very true. You minister to those who are in need, taking the bread from your own plate to feed their hunger, denying yourself necessary things to give to them; you visit and care for them in sickness; you spend time and money to relieve them. Then, so soon as the trouble is past and they need your money or help no longer, they turn away from you as if you had wronged them. Almost rarest of human virtues is true gratitude. The one may return, but the nine come no more. . . . Grateful words are like cups of cold water to one who is weary and faint; and surely it is fit that men should be grateful.

But suppose they are not. Suppose years of kindness are forgotten in a moment. . . . Though the recipient of your charity turned out an impostor, yet, if it was bestowed in Christ’s name and for His sake, He will say at the last, “Ye did it unto Me.” . . .

Sometimes the results of work on human lives may be seen in the expansion and beautifying of character, in the conversion of the ungodly, in the comforting of sorrow . . . and yet much of our work must be done in simple faith, and perhaps in heaven it will be seen that the best results of our lives have been from their unconscious influences and our most fruitful efforts those we considered in vain.

The old water-wheel turns around and round outside the wall. It seems to be idle work that it is doing. You see nothing accomplished. But its shaft runs through the mill-wall and turns a great system of machinery there, and makes bread to feed many a hungry mouth. So we soil away, many of us, and oftentimes see no rewards or fruits. But if we are true to God, we are making results somewhere for His glory and the good of others. . . . No true work for Christ can ever fail. Somewhere, sometime, somehow there will be results. We need not be discouraged or disheartened, for in due time we shall reap if we faint not.

But what if we faint?

Dr J. R. Miller, Week-Day Religion, 1894