#40 - What Makes Faith Real - Part 1

[Have YOU borrowed from the library or bought a copy of "SAVING FREEDOM" by Jim DeMint? It really is the ONE non-fiction book you need to read as soon as possible. If you own a copy, loan it out to friends and have them pass it around. It is THAT good.]

“The Dark Night of the Soul” - By Chuck Colson, August 28, 2009, Breakpoint.com

"Be kind. Remember EVERYONE [caps mine] you meet is fighting a hard battle." T.H. Thompson

[Note: (1) Do you sometimes feel like others seem to be "more spiritual," to have it all "together" as a believer than you, so much so that you feel somewhat guilty, as though you don't measure up as a Christian? Well, I have, and I doubt there has ever been a Christian who many times feels that way. This article addresses the subject and while it is a bit of heavy reading, note the points I've put in bold type. I will address it further in another special "Letters to the Church" on another special posting this coming Sunday. You won't want to miss checking the posting for this Sunday!; (2) Don't miss my "Just for Laughs" joke at the end of this posting. It's something I'll try to add at the end of every posting. If YOU have one you'd like me to pass on, sent it to me as a comment.; and (3) ]Guess what? I've made some additions to my "Life Truths" posting (#`11)on the movie "Saint Ralph" on my youth blog: (a) First of all there is now an intro to help you make this a truly family friendly movie that you can even show to those in grade school;and (b) points 16, 19, and 22 are NEW.]
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Each month on BreakPoint we examine a great book that helped shape Western Christendom. This month, Dr. Ken Boa shines a light on a difficult subject. Perhaps you remember the media frenzy over Mother Teresa’s letters, which were published after her death. Because revealed depression, doubts, and spiritual darkness, many argued that Mother Teresa’s Christian faith could not possibly have been real. Atheist Christopher Hitchens, for instance, insisted that she must have realized that “religion is a human fabrication.” Well, nonsense. Hitchens had no way of understanding Mother Teresa and her faith, but there’s another author who would have understood perfectly. In fact, this man might have said that Mother Teresa’s struggles actually showed just how real her faith was.

John of the Cross, who lived in the 1500s, is the writer, friar, and priest featured in Ken Boa’s latest Great Books Audio CD Series. Ken tells us that this man’s “spiritual development was forged in a life of pain, conflict, and passion for God.” The title of John’s most famous work, The Dark Night of the Soul, is familiar to all of us because we’ve all experienced this, as Christians have through the centuries, the “seasons of darkness and dryness in the spiritual journey. Too frequently, our modern attitude about prayer is to make it all about ourselves instead of about Christ. We focus on a “technique or set of steps” that’s supposed to bring sure results. But this approach can leave us unprepared to deal with the doubts and darkness that can overwhelm even the most faithful Christian. John of the Cross contended that the dry seasons teach us about our own powerlessness and our own need for complete reliance on Christ. He talked about not one, but several different kinds of “nights” that we may go through.

There’s the night that we experience in our senses. But then there’s the far darker kind that we experience in our soul, which leads to terrible feelings of “desolation” and “abandonment.” We may experience these nights in “active” ways, when we must work to reach out to God, and “passive” ways, when we must be still and allow God to act upon us. Of the dark night of the senses, Ken says this: When “the senses are stripped of all pleasure and joy in prayer,” our attention can be drawn toward God, who purifies us and takes us “through dread to eventual joy, not despair.” But we can only experience this kind of growth if we willingly submit to God even when all our feelings seem to be pulling us away from Him. As for the dark night of the soul, John of the Cross explained that it may be used to teach the soul “renunciation and deprivation,” “faith,” and finally, “the ultimate rapture of union with Christ.” As you can imagine, this teaching has been tough for many to take. Even one translator acknowledged that it can be “repelling.” But, as Ken says, it nonetheless has something important to teach us about “the cost of discipleship”—even those of us who will never experience a night as dark as the one Mother Teresa knew. Inspired by The Dark Night of the Soul, we can respond to Christopher Hitchens and others like him that they’ve got it exactly backwards. It’s the shallow faith, the kind that focuses only on our own happiness, that can’t last. The times of darkness, the dark nights of the soul, ultimately serve to make our faith stronger and deeper.

Further Reading and Information
The Dark Night of the Soul - John of the Cross

[Just for laughs (from Reader's Digest, 5/09, pp. 29-30): Johnny's mother stops to watch her son read the Bible to her cat. "Isn't that sweet?" she says. But an hour later, she hears a terrible racket. Running out the door, she finds Johnny stuffing the cat into a bucket of water. "Johnny, what are you dong?" "I'm baptizing Muffin," he replies. "But cat's don't like to be in water." "Well then, he shouldn't have joined my church."]