SENTIMENTAL FAITH VERSUS THE GOD WHO IS "I AM"

Luanne Austin

• Salem Lutheran Church Celebrates Bicentennial.
• Smith Creek Regular Baptist Church Observes 250th Anniversary.
• Lindale Mennonite Church Hits 100th Birthday.

In my role as a religion editor/reporter for the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Virginia, researching and writing about church histories and the religious past of the Shenandoah Valley is part of my job. Most of the Valley’s oldest congregations were started by first- or second- generation Europeans who migrated here by way of Pennsylvania.

Though the British Empire’s long arm did extend this far, Anglicans had less motivation to venture west of the Blue Ridge Mountains than their freedom-seeking brethren. Thus those who sought such liberty—the Anabaptists, the Quakers, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians—were not much bothered by the edicts imposed on the New World by the Church of England.

After reading of the Valley’s early settlers—how they left home for the unknown to live according to their consciences, learned the hard way that their Indian neighbors were not to be pushed around, broke their backs clearing virgin land for gardens and houses and cattle—I found it easy to idealize their courage and faith.

And I wonder, as the religious persecution eased, as the wilderness was tamed, and as the settlers began aging, if these early pioneers themselves became tame, complacent, with only their memories to remind them of the adventures they once lived walking hand in hand with God. For a people or a person who can point to a collective or personal past in which God has been real and faithful and miracle-working, it is so tempting, once life has settled down, to slide into a backward-looking religion. A religion based on a miraculous experience or revelation or blessed time that is now in the past.

A sentimental faith.

Sentimental faith dwells on what God did yesterday. I am still moved at the mercy of God that forgave my youthful crimes against him, my loved ones, friends, enemies, and strangers. I weep at the great things he has done. And I sometimes long for yesterday, when all my troubles seemed so far away because he was so present.

Yesterday, for me, was the streets of New York City suburbs. I came to Christ raw, untrained in the ways of religion. I knew how to divide a pound of pot into ounce-sized bags for sale, could shoplift an elephant, and used the "F" word twice in each sentence. I harbored much bitterness, was always lonely, and could not cry. I subjected my body to drug abuse, promiscuous sex, and sleep deprivation.

The night I met Christ, it all came pouring out—all the pain, all the hatred, all the sadness. For the first time in my life, I felt loved and forgiven and clean. The next few years were filled with daily miracles of deliverance, providence, and revelation. I slept, ate, learned, played, cried, lived with Jesus. He made me into a much better version of me than I had ever been capable of. The culmination of all this was my move from New York to the Shenandoah Valley, where just about everyone (or so it seemed) was a Christian. Life was so different; God had called me out to a new place. His presence was so with me all the time.

Then I learned about Christianity as a religion; I became involved with church; I settled into a life routine. Now I, like the religious people all around me, became complacent.

When our faith is of the sentimental sort, we "pray on yesterday’s faith" (to use musician Ben Arthur’s play on words), but without yesterday’s results.

Yesterday’s faith was for yesterday’s challenges. When my faith is based on yesterday or last year or last decade, I am off the hook for today. It may be an act of the subconscious to keep me from dealing with the deeper issues of transformation and sanctification that surface as I "mature." The obstacles that confront me today, from without and within, cannot be faced with yesterday’s faith.

Recalling the miracles of the past and the things he’s brought me through is futile unless the memories are incentives to believe that God is still interested in me, still active in my life, still working out his plan for me, today.

God made this clear to the Israelites when they wandered through the wilderness after their sensational exit from Egypt. He gave them fresh food every day, calling it "manna." His people were to gather it from the ground every morning. If they stored some for the next day, it rotted. They had to depend on God to be "I am" every day.

God provided the manna yesterday and the day before that. That gave them reason to believe he would do it again today. Yesterday’s manna was for yesterday. Like the Israelites, I must gather it afresh each day.

On a larger scale, denominations, ministries, and spiritual movements often operate on yesterday’s faith, losing their relevance as the world changes or as the adherents age. We see this in the many churches attended by only the elderly. The church members point back with a sentimental feeling to a time when it all meant so much. So let’s keep doing it that way.

In my interviews with these folks, the name of Jesus rarely comes up. They’ll talk about former ministers, building programs, and the church member who made the pulpit, but they don’t say anything about God, his faithfulness, his saving grace, his love.

This type of church is often unequipped to help members who face personal difficulties, because while it holds the form of religion, the supernatural power is gone. Many denominations were founded on a revelation that over time has become overdeveloped theologically and experientially, in preaching and in practice, while other relevant truths are ignored. In this case, sentimentality fosters an obsessive devotion to the founders, long dead, and their idolized precepts.

God is not a yesterday kind of guy. God is not an old man (or woman). God is always now, forever.

Sentimental faith is often accompanied by someday faith.

When we hear God’s voice today, telling us to apologize to our spouse or send $200 to a missionary or tell the truth or quit work to raise our children—to trust God in some way today—but we dismiss it or put it off or flatly refuse, then we risk losing the ability to hear him.

We think, "Tomorrow I will be stronger in my faith" or "It can wait" or "God understands I can’t do it because of my weakness, which I will eventually overcome." Someday, we think, my faith will be like yesterday.

"Today," he says over and over in Hebrews 3 and 4, "when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." Doing so, he says, will result in "an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God."

Leaving us with an empty shell of an old religion.

God does not reveal himself to us as "I was," or "I will be." God is "I am."

And we are, too.

—Luanne Austin, Harrisonburg, Virginia, is a religion reporter for the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record. Her column, "Rural Pen," appears in the paper each Friday.