Swole Faith
Every man, at one point in his life, takes up weight lifting. For some, like myself, it’s a passing phase. You take it up for a few months before other pressing needs take precedence, like sitting or lying down. Others maintain a lifestyle of weight lifting, diligently going to the gym multiple times a week. The frequency in which you go to the gym has a direct correlation on how much weight you lift. Those who go sporadically start at lower weight, while those who go frequently progress to heavier weights.
Any weight lifter will tell you the same thing; if you want to build muscles, you need some kind of resistance. Lying on a bench and lifting nothing but air will not help you build muscles. Lying on a bench and lifting some kind of weight that offers resistance will build muscles.
Our faith is the same way. We do not grow our faith—we increase its strength.
Often times we think we need more faith. We pray for more faith and we seek more faith. Matthew 17:20 highlight the fallacy of this kind of thinking. Jesus tells His disciples, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, move—and it will move.”
Jesus does not say, “if you grow your faith, or if you have a lot of faith, you can tell this mountain to move.” He says even if you have faith the size of a tiny seed, you can move this mountain. What Jesus is saying is that the size of faith does not matter; the authenticity and strength of faith is what matters.
So that begs the question, how do we make our faith stronger? The answer is simple: resistance. In the same way that our muscles will not grow stronger without resistance, our faith will not grow stronger without resistance. As paradoxical as it may sound, doubt is necessary for our faith to grow stronger.
Doubt is best introduced by asking “why.” Asking “why” forces us to consider all sides of the issue. Asking ‘why’ forces us to really think about what we do and what we believe. Asking “why” introduces contrary points and ideas, and in the process of weighing both sides of an idea or doctrine, we begin to flex our spiritual muscles. Asking “why” helps us to solidify our faith, and make it our own.
As a college student, I was the Children's Pastor at Virginia SDA Church. The Youth Pastor, a very close friend and mentor of mine, would drive with me on Friday evenings from his home in Rockville, Maryland to the church in Manassass, Virginia. The trip took one hour one way, sometimes more depending on the infamous DC traffic. Conversations on the ride to Virginia almost always revolved around the Washington DC sports team. Conversations on the way back from Virginia, however, would always be about faith. He would ask me questions that challenged my faith. There were many sleepless Friday nights when I would struggle with the questions that were posed. In the process of introducing doubt, my faith began to grow stronger. My faith began to become my own. It was no longer my parent's faith or my Pastor’s faith, but my faith. That process was only possible through struggling with doubt.
We, the Church, often ask why our young people leave. That seems to be the only “why” question we ask at church. While there are many answers and reasons, I believe one of the main reasons is because they have not owned their faith. They grow up believing what their church or parents believe, and never internalize and personalize it to make it their own. They are taught to ask “what” and “how,” but never asked to answer “why.” They know what the Sabbath is, they know how it came that we believe in the Sabbath, but they are rarely asked why they believe in the Sabbath. The result is a group of young people who would dominate in Bible Trivia, but lack a faith that they can call their own. Why is it a surprise, then, when they go to college and for the first time ask themselves “why should I go to church on Saturday?” and the answer is “I don't know.”
There are dangers in dealing with resistance. A friend of mine wanted to start working out, so asked another friend to go with him. The friend that he asked goes to the gym every day, and had been lifting weights consistently for years. When they went to the gym, my friend started lifting heavier weights than he should have. When he went home, he experienced pain in his body, and upon visiting the hospital, was diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis.
Rhabdomyolysis, simply put, is when the muscles explode due to over-exertion. My friend was lifting weights to the extent that his muscles exploded. That is the danger of having too much resistance. At his strength level and at his point in the weight-lifting process, he should have started with a lower weight and built his way up to a heavier weight.
It also works in our faith. Having too much doubt can cause spiritual rhabdomyolysis, the exploding of our faith in the bad way. The best way to avoid such a situation is to have a lifting partner. That is our responsibility as leaders of the church: help facilitate the discussion with our young people, and provide assistance. Similar to what my friend and mentor did for me, we need to create a safe and healthy environment to provide the opportunity for the youth to ask themselves why they believe what they do.
We provide information to our young people, but we never teach them how to apply it. That is the very definition of spiritual maturity, the application of information to their daily lives. When they do not or cannot apply information to their lives, the information becomes irrelevant. Church, then, becomes irrelevant. We need to help them answer the question “why is this important,” and “why does it matter?”
Our churches need to become like gyms. They need to be a place where people can come together and help each other work out their faith. It needs to be a healthy place where questions can be raised, discussions can take place, and healthy relationships created and nurtured. In doing so, we can help a generation that is able to develop and work out their faith so that when they are in position to lead our church—they do so with swole faith.