FAITH IS RISK

Jon Guttman, in his Editorial for the June, 2002 edition of Military History, wrote about three decisive battles that owed their outcomes to calculated risk-taking. He says that officers today are taught risk assessment – the art of comparing the importance of one’s mission against the risks involved. There is actually a matrix that can be used to calculate the relative likelihood and severity of the risk, enabling the leader to determine what can be done to reduce those risks. The risk must always be calculated against the reward. There is a difference between a reckless risk and a calculated risk, and a commander who is skilled at the latter will invariably accomplish more than one who will not accept risk at all. He cited the calculated risk taken 60 years ago by Japanese Admiral Yamamoto. Desperate to draw the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier force into a decisive battle, Yamamoto launched a diversionary carrier strike against Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and invaded Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, at the same time that he dispatched the Combined Fleet to Midway atoll in the Central Pacific. The complicated stratagem was meant to compel the Americans to divide their carrier force, allowing Yamamoto’s main force to annihilate those that tried to defend Midway. But it was undone by the Americans having cracked Japanese codes and learning his true intentions. Aided by that knowledge, Admiral Chester Nimitz took a calculated risk of his own, sending all three of his remaining first-line fleet carriers to confront the Combined Fleet’s four carriers at Midway. The course of the battle that followed highlighted just how much of a risk Nimitz took of losing everything. But the final outcome certainly justified that risk. In exchange for the loss of the carrier  USS Yorktown (see image above), the Americans sank all four of their principal opponents. Yamamoto got the decisive battle he had sought, but without the outcome he had desired, as the Japanese navy retired from its first major defeat in 350 years.

What risks would you be willing to take to win in the battle of life? The patriarch Abraham took enormous risks in his life. Hebrews 11:8-19 records that when God called him to leave his home, and his country, and his family, he went, even though he did not know where he was going. He went, we are told, by faith. Faith here is characterized as risk-taking.

Abraham is held up as the father of us all by faith. St. Paul writes: “He is the father of us all. As it is written: ‘I have made you the father of many nations.’ He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed – the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the ruler of many nations.”[1]

Soren Kierkegaard writes,

“Surely Christianity’s intention is that a person use this life to venture out, to do so in such a way that God can get hold of him, and that one gets to see whether or not he actually has faith.”[2]

             Often the issues of doubt and faith are described in terms of the intellectual questions people have about God, and life. But, maybe the more difficult questions have to do with whether we are willing to venture out, to risk, to let God get hold of us, to see whether or not we actually have faith. There are many people who profess to believe in God and to follow Christ who have no faith in this sense. They are armchair Christians, who talk the language of Christianity but do precious little about it. Kierkegaard again, 

“Truth exists for a particular individual only as he himself produces it in action. If the individual prevents the truth from being for him in that way, we have a phenomenon of the demonic. Truth has always had many loud proclaimers, but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the truth, allow it to permeate his whole being, accept all its consequences, and not have an emergency hiding place for himself and a Judas kiss for the consequences.”[3]

Abraham did not have the Bible. He did not have a church. He lived in a pagan society. Archeologists have discovered that that Ur of the Chaldees, located on the Euphrates River in what is today southern Iraq, nineteen hundred years BC, boasted an elaborate system of writing, sophisticated mathematical calculations, educational facilities, and extensive business and religious records. They worshipped Nammu the moon-god. The royal cemetery reveals that ritual burials were sealed with the horrors of human sacrifice. Abraham worshipped these pagan gods.[4] At this point in human history “the world was lost in degrading views of God. From the bull-worship of Crete, to the animal deities of brilliant Egypt, from the worship of the Sun-god on the Phoenician coast, to the sadistic and sensual deities of which the sailors who traded to the Indus and the Malabar coast could tell, it was one wide story of burdensome corruption. Some search for something purer, better, holier must have stirred in the heart of Abraham of Ur,”[5] because the Most High God appeared to him and called him out of his native land to go, he knew not where. And he went! What kind of risk was he taking to do that? What motivated him to pull up the stakes of his tent, leave his known world for the unknown, and go on the road? What sort of reward was he anticipating? God made him some promises which made his journey and dislocation worthwhile.

            “The Lord said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’”[6]

He made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He looked forward to the city that was to come, whose architect and builder is God. He saw his life in this world as a journey where nothing was permanent. He did not put roots down where he lived because he had invested in the future. God told him that he was to have offspring as numerous as the stars in the heavens, but no children were born to him and Sarah. Then the Lord told him that his wife was to have a child in her old age. Abraham thought it was so funny that he fell facedown and laughed about the absurdity of it.[7]

St. Paul comments: “Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”[8]

When the child does indeed come and grows into a boy, God tells him to go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on Mount Moriah, and Abraham, saddled up his donkey, and set out to do it. How could he do it? Abraham took the calculated risk that God, who gave him Isaac, when his and Sarah’s bodies were past bearing children, could also raise the dead if he were sacrificed.

Kierkegaard calls Abraham the knight of faith, for he is willing to do what is absurd, to take the ultimate of risks in obedience to God. “He who walks the narrow road of faith has no one to advise him – no one understands him. Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that which unites all human life is passion, and faith is a passion.”

Did Abraham know all the answers to the questions about God and life? No, of course not. He laughed when God said that he would have a son. He must have doubted at times. But he was passionate in his willingness to take the risk of faith. It was a calculated risk to him because he believed that he could trust the God who called him to venture out in his life.

Miguel de Unamuno wrote, “Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God himself.” Faith that never doubts is a dead faith because it is never exercised.

Abraham did not receive what was promised in his own lifetime. “They saw them and welcomed them from a distance…. Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one.”[9] He took the calculated risk that God would deliver on his promises.

“Again without risk, no faith; the more risk, the more faith… The absurd is that eternal truth has come into existence in time, that God has come into existence, has been born, has grown up, has come into existence exactly as an individual human being, indistinguishable from any other human being…. Christianity claims to be the eternal, essential truth that has come into existence in time. It proclaims itself as the paradox and thus requires the inwardness of faith – that which is an offense to the Jews, foolishness to the Greeks, and an absurdity to the understanding… To know a creed by rote is, quite simply, paganism. This is because Christianity is inwardness. Christianity is paradox, and paradox requires but one thing: the passion of faith.”[10]

             The journey to faith in Christ requires risk, and change. It is as anxiety provoking as undertaking a major trip to an unknown destination. Abraham undertook such a trip and became a model for faith. Life is such a journey. We never know what the future has in store for us. Unexpected challenges cause us to have to respond with decisions and actions that we never anticipated having to make.

In March 2000 I received a call to accept the position of Pastor of Amelia Plantation Chapel on Amelia Island in Florida. I had been living for fourteen years in San Antonio, Texas, where I was the Rector of Christ Episcopal Church, a large congregation in the historic part of the city. Before receiving this call I had anticipated completing twenty years at Christ Church and then retiring back to north-east Florida where we had lived for ten years before moving to Texas. It is true that I had been praying about my future, and was open to alternative possibilities, but I did not expect my prayers to be answered so quickly and in such an unusual way. I guess I did not rightly know what to expect. God surprised me with an option I had not considered. Amelia Plantation Chapel was an inter-denominational congregation, of mainly retired people from all over the nation, who moved to Amelia Island to enjoy its climate, environment, stunning ocean-side beauty, recreational amenities, and proximity to the city of Jacksonville with all its resources. I had worked in Jacksonville, was familiar with the area, and had many friends there. It was just where we wanted to move back to when we retired. But this was a job! Did I really want to down-size that much, from a  busy, multi-staff church in the heart of a major, diverse metropolitan area, where I was established? In addition, I was about to leave on a three month sabbatical as a Visiting Fellow at St. John’s College in the University of Durham. The timing seemed odd. Yet I was about to be 59 years old, and was aware that I needed to decide what I wanted to do for the next ten years of my professional life. Did I want to continue to do the same thing in the same place, or did I want to try something different? There were enormous risks involved. I would have to take a cut in compensation for the first 18 months. There was no guarantee that the congregation would grow under my leadership. I would be exchanging a sure thing for something quite uncertain. I, of course, talked it over with trusted friends, and wrote down the pros and the cons of moving. But what helped me the most was an article I read at that time in a business magazine, FAST COMPANY. It was an interview by Polly Labarre with philosopher and management consultant Peter Koestenbaum. He styled himself as a philosopher who helped leaders in business to be successful human beings. This is what he said which resonated with me and enabled me to move forward in my life’s journey.

“How do we make truly difficult choices? How do we act when the risks seem overwhelming? How can we muster the guts to burn our bridges and to create a condition of no return?” The real issues are: “What kind of life do I want to lead? What is my destiny? How much evil am I willing to tolerate?” He quoted Kierkegaard, “Anxiety rules the human condition… it can serve as a powerful, productive force in your life. Anxiety is the natural condition. Anxiety leads to action. Anxiety is the experience of growth itself. It is what we feel when we go from one stage to the next. Go where the pain is.” Koestenbaum went on to say, “One of the gravest problems in life is self-limitation. We create defense mechanisms to protect us from the anxiety that comes from freedom. We refuse to fulfill our potential. We limit how we live so that we can limit the amount of anxiety that we experience. But no significant decision – personal or organizational – has ever been undertaken without being attended by an existential crisis, or without a commitment to wade through anxiety, uncertainty and guilt.”

After mulling these words over, I spent two hours with a counselor who had been helping me to explore issues relating to my personal identity and future priorities. After several days of working through the details, I made the decision to go forward to the next stage of my life and embraced the uncertainty of the future over the present.

If you want to have faith, then you must be willing to do what God is calling you to do. What is it that he is calling you to do? Listen, open yourself to his inner voice, and you will hear. But you must be willing to act, to risk, to venture, as did Abraham. The reward is worthwhile.

(Ted Schroder, Buried Treasure, p.53ff.)

[1] Romans 4:16-18

[2] Journals and Papers, ed. And trans. Hong and Hong, Vol.3, 538

[3] The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reider Thomte with Albert B. Anderson, PUP, 1980, 138-141

[4] Joshua 24:2

[5] E.M. Blaiklock, Today’s Handbook of Bible Characters, (Minneapolis, Bethany, 1979), 18

[6] Genesis 12:1-3

[7] Genesis 17:17

[8] Romans 4:19-21

[9] Hebrews 11:13,16

[10] S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ed. And trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton University Press. 1989, 203-230