Real Faith

I was a visitor. I didn’t know what to expect. I was excited to worship in a different church and followed the parishioners into the sanctuary. At the appropriate moment, the minister read the scripture then began his sermon. It was a flowery, theologically-loaded opening which went in one ear and out the other never getting close to my heart. Then he paused, looked up, and admitted his opening was not his at all. “It was artificially made,” he said, “an A.I. introduction.” From there, he proceeded to deliver a refreshingly real and memorable sermon. His point was about the difference between artificial faith and real, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

I was struck by the difference between his opening and the rest of the sermon. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was a difference between the manufactured part and the real part. One was grammatically perfect and theologically accurate but sounded like cardboard. The other was less articulate but sounded like bread.

On the way home, I thought about our lives of faith. Like the sermon, some are manufactured, others are real. There are those who seem to have pushed a button and can utter formulaic declarations of faith and are eager to teach you to do the same. Others struggle to put into words what they believe, but when they do, it’s sometimes messy and awkward . . . but at least it’s real. Their armor of faith, to use Paul’s image, is not shiny but dented.

It seems to me, God wants us to mean what we say and say what we mean, as the song goes, even if it’s not perfect. At least it’ll be real, and that’s what God cares about most.