An Embodied Faith Story: Faith Alone Is Void of Faith

I’m in a women’s small group and I'm the only westerner among 5 Korean women. I'm the Bible study leader who is fumbling her way through the language discrepancies, theological training helps and hindrances, and cultural-age differences. We are studying Romans. It was their choice and now I see it as a terrifically challenging choice and one I sometimes feel ill prepared to do justice to in my context. A great position to learn! Last week we looked at Romans 4 where it talks about Abraham’s incredible faith. Even as the promise of God looked beyond hope Abraham grew in his faith. Mysterious!

Personally I’ve been wrestling with “faith” language. In the church we throw the word around as if we all know what it means and “have it”. But do we really know what it means? Do we really “have it” as if it is some favorable disease or common cold? In the sense that we have learned to have a "faith confession" I think most Christians “have it”. We can tell some Biblical stories. We can talk about Jesus who we believe lived a human-God life, died to redeem human sin and rose again to give life to all who confess their sins. We might even be able to recite a creed. If you are really good and committed you might be able to rattle off your church’s articles of faith. Does our “faith” however, go beyond right believing, really?

For me faith can no longer be only some cognitive enterprise of a solitary person. (as if it was really only that before)If faith is something I only have in my mind, then what difference does it make? Instead it must be a paticipatory somatic(bodily) and integrative undertaking in community. Sometimes we understand that our faith must cause us to participate differently in life and we even understand that faith should transform our work life, our play life, our financial life, and our church life. However, in a culture so strongly indebted to rugged individualism, do we really experience faith as a communal reality? Does our faith help us to engage with others in creative ways? If faith doesn't enter into the communal aspects of human living then how can it really be a faith lived "out"?

If our faith isn't lived "out" and with "others", then faith leads to what some call functional or practical atheism. This functional atheism happens when right thinking doesn't flow into right living. In a day when life is so compartmentalized it is easy even for Christians to live out their lives void of embodied faith and thus "functional atheism". I am painfully aware of my own practice of "atheism" as it relates to the somatic communal expression of faith. There is so much more for me as I learn what it looks like to follow Jesus. There is so much more for those of us who call ourselves Christian!

In theological circles we do have ideas to talk about such an embodied faith. We talk about the integration of “ortho-doxy(right thinking), orthopraxy(right practice) and even “ortho-pathy” (right heart). I think these concepts help us to see that faith isn’t only “what we think” or “what we’ve concluded by life experimentation” or even by how we understand the nature of our “will”. A faith not lived out isn't faith at all. Yet a faith lived alone is equally void of faith. Faith is to be engaged in by the whole person among persons. Faith moves beyond me, my mind, my heart and my own “doings” and into the places and spaces with people we call “world”. As we experience the mysteries of “faith” so too do others who experience us.

As the conversation in our small group progressed we expressed discouragement together. Our collective reality reflects lives lacking integrated and embodied faith together. We can talk about “right doctrine” and “right living” and “right heart” but it still seems so entirely cognitive and stale. Granted…this is in our problem not “faith’s’ problem. I appreciated our honesty with each other.

As I listened and wrestled with them it occurred to me that our “faith” is not only missing some form of integrated embodiment but our confessions of faith are too. We have failed to see and tell the stories of real life Abrahams. We spend so much time practicing the cognitive language of our faith and even learning great theologies to go with it. Jesus is someone we’ve learned to know from a book. We’ve made lists of what Jesus did, published Bibles with red lettered sentences to excavate the nuances of Jesus’ language, combed historical material to recreate the real, real Jesus. It has been helpful. However, have we fostered imaginations which allow us to see Jesus in the people we see, touch, and hear everyday? Have we developed hearts seeking out where Jesus is living among us in our family lives, our work lives, and our play lives? Maybe Jesus "shows up" in an unexpected person but we've missed Him. What if we began to see Him there in those ordinary places. Even better, what if when we talked about our confessions of faith--what we believe--we also had real life examples of how our confessions became Jesus among us.

A popular buzz word or self-descriptor in Christian circles these days declares selves to be “followers of Jesus”. I love this language, and use it because it gets at the need to embody our faith. But still, do we tell stories of living people who are following Jesus? Do we know how to see what it looks like for us to be “followers of Jesus” in our villages around the world?

In the midst of doing really good things with “faith alone”, have we dehumanized a “faith” which was always intended to be embodied in community? I think we have. The Reformation gave us great insight into the importance of faith. However, like many who have gone before us we've taken the gifts of our foremothers and fathers--in this case the idea of "faith alone" (and not works) and made it to be "my faith" and "the faith that I can logically describe to you to prove the existance of God so that you too will believe". There is so much more to following Jesus than this kind of "faith alone". I know the saints of the Reformation knew this. We've taken the humanity, the lived "out"-ness and the distinctly communal nature out of "faith". Maybe we should begin to call our disembodied faith -- faith "alone".

There is room for not only confessing the tenets of our doctrines but en-fleshing them with real life embodiments of Jesus. What if we began to tell the people’s stories of living faith so that our collective faith moves from “idea” to "body"? Hearing stories of people participating in and practicing faith would engage our own imaginations and allow the mystery of faith to compel us out into our own stories or shared life experiences. Maybe if we heard stories of real life faith, we could relearn to read our Bible stories. We might even learn to retell our beloved creeds and statements of faith in ways that help people, ourselves included, embody faith in our local communities.

As the small group struggled with “faith” I told a story of a real life person with faith, I think, on par with Abraham. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time but later realized what had happened. I told about a man from Rwanda who after being an orphaned refugee in Uganda returned to his home country post-genocide to take in orphans. He went, he stayed, and he gives all he has because of a somatic faith reality. There are so many more like him all over our world and probably in our own local communities. However, he is one who continues to burn on my heart. I told them his story because this man for me embodies the reality of faith and gives me hope for my own faith quest. If he can embody faith in his context, and if he can be a radical follower of Jesus Christ there, than I can find courage to do the same “here” too.

Later a woman who comes to the Bible study asked more questions about Rwanda and this man. She had some good questions and an intense desire to learn. She asked if I stay in contact with this Rwandan man. I do. She asked if there would be a way to help. I said, 'There is." She asked for more information and wanted to do something tangible. She did.

Hmmm... faith.... What is faith? This Korean woman, even in the midst of struggling with the meaning of faith, mysteriously held faith, and shared faith in our midst. She embodied it in those moments with us. God embodied himself in her for the rest of us. She acted on what she believed. Her actions will go on to confirm someone else’s faith, a complete stranger, who lives a world away on a different continent and in a different culture. How can I explain the nature of that moment? It cannot be counted, categorized or theorized. It is what it is-embodied integrated faith. It is encouraging, compelling and revealing of a God who embodies himself even today in a world we call home. If nothing else, faith is told and beheld so that it can be lived. Faith "alone" lacks life but faith shared in the ongoing story of our complicated lives has the power to give life. We need to do more telling! We need to do more beholding so that we can do more living!

"Stare and Play Here"

The subway in Korea almost always creates a "moment". The other day I was on my way to get some acupuncture in Busan. Yes, I'm willingly having my body poked with needles. It really isn't as bad as I dreamt it might be. On the subway I sat in my favorite place--at the edge, next to the door, and only next to one other person. We had just stopped and started again. A Korean woman walked through the maze of people standing or "surfing" the isle. She seemed starteled more than usual at the sight of me. I was getting my fare share of staring before she took her glance but the reaction on her face was either one of sheer horror or intense curiosity. She bent over from the waste, her knees cracked to stoop and take a better look at her specimen...me. I had a purple ski hat on. I don't think she was looking at that. My eyes seemed to be the subject of her horrifying admiration. I forget how different I am in Korea because when I look out everyone around me is the same. Imagine two bright blue eyes starring at me in a sea of dark brown ones. I must have been something to see. Others noticed her intrusion. She listened to their stares. So she took a seat next to the elderly woman to my left. As we rode along, now I was hyper aware of my surroundings and how out of place I was, I watched as she secretly tried to catch more glimpses of me. I wondered, "What did she think she was seeing?? It occurred to me that she might have a disability because it is so unlike people in Korea to make such obvious intrusions. I was very aware of her but I tried to sit there as if I was oblivious.

I had transferred subway lines. I had been in a new subway car in a seat jammed in between hips wider than mine. Not to knock my medium size...but to sit between woman noticeably wider than myself is a rare and memorable occasion in Korea. Just as I got up from the seat I heard someone say, "Hello, catch". The subway is a quiet place. So of course I heard it. Often I want to just ignore the random, "hello's" thrown my way. People often try to be polite by offering a greeting in my native tongue. Or they hope to practice their own list of English phrases on someone who understands. I thought about just ignoring the "hello" completely. But how could I ignore this one. It was different. "Hello, catch?"  What was that about? I was the only foreigner in the whole car and it was obvious the man was calling out to ME! He said it again, "Hello, catch". I must say I've had my share of a million "Hello's" in Korea but this was a first. If I didn't turn around to acknowledge him, I'd shame him even more than he'd just shamed himself by breaking the sacred communal silence. Against my first desire I turned around to find an elderly man with a basketball in his hands. He held on to the ball and motioned with it for me to "catch". "What play catch with you on the subway?" I was thinking to myself, "This is either the day of crazy people on the subway or I have a sign on my head which reads, 'stare and play here'. What else could it be? So I caught the basketball and watched his mouth grin from ear to ear. I'm sure I made his day and he could care less about anyone else on the subway. All the while I knew I was the one everyone was staring at not him. "Look at that tall blond who is playing catch with an old man and a basketball." Little could they, the masses, know about my history with a basketball. I throw it back to him with a little uncertainty and embarrassment and shortly after exited the subway full of stares.

I'm reminded that no matter how hard I try to fit into the culture I've been living in for a short 3 1/2 years I'm still very much a guest and an oddity. In the beginning, at times it was fun to be noticed and yet after 3 years the fun has subsided. I keep thinking the curiosity and experimentation with my foreignness should go away. I wonder what they think I am? Who do they make me(us)out to be? I'm not only a guest but an "item" to see and interact with. There is curiosity all around...for them and for me. Sometimes their curiosity lies dormant but when it decides to wake up it screams of experimental interaction. If they only knew half of what lie beneath the purple hat, blue eyes, tall frame and blond hair... We both might be surprised.  There might be more room for "staring" and "playing" here in Korea.