As I tend to reflect on how faith should be something simple, I am dumbfounded and regenerated by an academic analysis of things like church, sacraments, and theology. Simple faith helps me love Christ, complex faith drives me to my knees in praise. While currently sitting here in class and learning about those that have come before me who have wrestled and fought about ideas and identities that we tend to just accept as common, while instead we fight about new carpet patters, I find myself overwhelmed with my attachment to the whole story of this world. Many individuals truly wrestled about baptism and communion for hundreds upon hundreds of years, and in our current days, we think that they may have been wrong and so easily and in an uneducated fashion change our practices to fit our methods. The very fact that those on fire in the early church who had memorized the scriptures and come to conclusions about faith can be usurped by those who just examine individual proof texts for their points is ghastly. Although simplicity is a necessary facet within faith, a true pursuit involves loving God with all your mind, and in doing so, I recognize the whole narrative and that drives me to my knees.
Whether we like the history of the church or not, we are stuck with it, and it is the story of God. Within all the atrocities, there have always been truly confessional individuals who furthered what God was doing, and in my current state, I have been profoundly influenced by their individual endeavors. Maybe before deciding on what works in our current state to further God’s kingdoms, maybe we should reflect on those who have come before because God’s been involved in bringing those to Himself much longer than I have… come to think of it, I have never done that, it’s always been God.
