Academics & Faith

This is a devotional Pastor Nate wrote waaaaay back during his college years.
As you may or may not know, I am a college student.  I attend a very nice, ELCA affiliated school, St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota.  Now here’s the tricky part, I’m a religion major.  I absolutely love my religion classes.  I’m studying a lot of theology, but also looking taking classes about other world religions such as Judaism and Buddhism.

Here’s the problem, St. Olaf is a very academic community.  So, while my classes require me to study religion, and read great works of theology and even read my Bible, it is all from a very different mindset, an academic mindset.
 
As I read works by Richard Bultmann, Albert Schweitzer, Friedrich Schleiermacher, William Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and many others, my personal faith life is being attacked from all sides.  What am I possibly supposed to believe?  Here are people 10,000 times smarter than I’ll ever be, committing their lives to studying Christianity, reconstructing the historical Jesus, and redefining what it means to pray from a theological standpoint.  And here I am, reading all of this stuff struggling with what to make of it.  I can’t disregard all that they are saying; the academic side of me won’t let me do that.  However, there comes a point where I just have to turn it all off.

“The Fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living.” (Hebrews 11:1 taken from The Message)
In looking over all the great men in the Bible, I realized something: Moses, Joshua, Abraham, the Disciples, Paul, John the Baptist, none of these guys ever thought their way to God.  God came to them, and they faithfully responded.

I don’t know much, but I do know that no matter how much I think and reason and research, I will never be able to grasp God.  He is infinite and so far beyond my comprehension.  Through my life experiences God has been revealed to me again and again, God has come to me, and now I must respond with faith.  

It is my faith, not my brain (thanks be to God) that matters, it is my faith that gives my life meaning.

Dear Lord, thank you for the ways You are revealed to us, so that we might trust and believe.
AMEN