How Catastrophe Shapes Our Faith

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The Epistle to the Hebrews was written to a group of Christ-followers who were discouraged. Some were beginning to drift away from the fellowship, while others were even thinking of walking away from their faith. In the letter, we see warning after warning against letting discouragement ripen into hardness of heart, leading to unbelief.

That scenario is entirely plausible. It’s not difficult to see how discouragement can mix with cynicism and lead to hardness of heart. And it’s not difficult to see how hardness of heart can finally lead a person to the place where he or she wonders if they even believe anymore, if they ever did.

While those warnings are the focus of Hebrews, we can find another response to discouragement in the Book of Job. In his book Life Without Lack, Dallas Willard traces three stages in the faith of Job. Like the audience for the Epistle to the Hebrews, Job saw his faith tested. But Job responded to his catastrophe differently.

Job’s faith went through three stages.

Job began, says Willard, with a faith of propriety. He trusted God to care for his family. He prayed for his children faithfully, and he enjoyed a kind of unspoken agreement with God: Job would live in faithful obedience (propriety), and God would protect him and his children.

A faith of propriety is not wrong-headed, but it is simplistic and naïve. We all know that life – even the life of a devout believer – will often take sharp turns into trouble and dismay. That is what happened to Job, and he moved into the second stage of faith, a faith of desperation.

This is the kind of fingernail faith where we are bewildered and overwhelmed, but we refuse to let go of God and His promises, even though it seems obvious that God has walked away and no longer hears the cries of His own.

This faith of desperation is a painful exercise in cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, we believe that God is wise and good and all-powerful, so He can be trusted. On the other hand, the chaos and catastrophe we see around us makes us wonder if God really is all that, if He really can be trusted. The faith of desperation is a conscious, deliberate decision to trust God regardless. Job later summarizes this stubborn faith: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).

But God doesn’t leave us in that state of stress and unease indefinitely.
 
Eventually, the faith of desperation ripens into a faith of sufficiency. Job finally came to see that his understanding was altogether inadequate to comprehend the ways of the Almighty, and he came to a place of rest. Job came to what we have called a settled life posture of trusting in God.

All this sounds like pious speculation until you’ve gone through the first two stages and arrived at a deep, unshakable confidence in the wisdom, goodness, and power of God, until you’ve internalized your confidence in God. In fact, there’s no way to get to the faith of sufficiency without going through the agony of catastrophe and the faith of desperation. You arrive at a place where you can say to yourself, “I have endured incalculable loss, and I have held on to my trust in God. Now I can see that even in my deepest agony, God is faithful, and He can be trusted.”

Catastrophe forces us to make a choice, to pivot one direction or the other.
 
We can let discouragement have its way and lead us toward hardness of heart and unbelief, or we can go through the birth-pangs of a deepening faith through the faith of desperation to the faith of sufficiency.

I would love to tell you that once you’ve gone through those three stages one time, you’ll never face a faith-testing catastrophe again, but we all know better. Life isn’t that simple. God in His mercy and grace often takes us down into the dark place once again to purify and strengthen our faith. Each time we face that life-shattering ruin, we’re better equipped: we know we’ve endured before, and every time we become more fully convinced that God can be trusted.

Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship