Should People Have The Power To Shake Your Faith?

(Note: On June 22, 2005, I answered the doorbell and was shocked to be served divorce papers. Neither my wife nor I had ever mentioned the possibility of divorce to the other. Later that day my wife informed me that she was no longer a Christian and that she was going to leave me and divorce me against my will. The next several Pastor's Pages reflect upon the tragedy.)

Should People Have The Power To Shake Your Faith? (June 26, 2005)

I received an email from a friend urging me to say nothing about an apostate former missionary who had embarked on a course of wickedness. In requesting my silence she wrote, "This will be a devastating blow to the faith of many people and will cause them to question themselves and their beliefs."

That may be right. We all have a habit of looking to others and adjusting our behavior in light of their example and our beliefs in light of their doctrine.

I can almost pinpoint the moment when I first began to think about the way that our faith affects other people. I was 15 and meeting with the deacon board of my home church after completing a catechism class with the pastor in preparation for baptism. I was knowledgeable (for my age) about the Bible and earnest in my faith. I had read C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict, had memorized scores of Bible verses, had gone to church all my life. I had no trouble expressing my faith to the board.

One of the deacons very graciously said that my testimony had strengthened his own faith. It was a humble and kind thing to say to an immature teenager, but I in my foolishness cringed inwardly and thought, "What in the world does your faith have to do with mine? Isn't your faith strong enough on its own? It should be. What I say or don't say, believe or don't believe, should have nothing to do with your personal trust in the Lord or your acknowledgment of the truth." Of course I did not mentally verbalize my feelings with those words at the time, but that is more or less what I felt.

Since then I have seen many times how our example can indeed "strengthen" or "weaken" the faith of others, and I now acknowledge the legitimate power of that influence. If you see a man whom you regard as wise and kind and right and firm and rational and good, then you are inclined to respect his moral philosophy, and maybe even adopt the doctrines that make him what he is. And if you already share his beliefs, then you delight and feel reassured in them.

But a bad example can have the same salutary effect, though by repulsion rather than attraction. You see the evil and say, "Oh no, no - whatever I do I must not become like that." My mother was the daughter of an alcoholic “rare-do-well” who died of cirrhosis; she responded by resolving never to drink at all. Thank God.

Receiving news of a formerly godly person who has turned away from the Lord and gone the way of the world is like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. It is painful and stunning and awful and nothing else. But a faith-shaker? Why should it be? Just look at the terrible facts and see how cruel, how mean-spirited, how dishonest, how irrational is the one who "having tasted of the heavenly gift" (Hebrews 6:4 ) now spits it out. That example may shake your faith in people's permanency (a faith you were unwise to hold and should have discarded by now), but it should not hurt your faith in God at all. It should do the opposite. It should pound into your soul the eternal urgency of clinging to Jesus, and terrify you lest you take the smallest step away from him.