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View Articles:
A Call to Faith
He Lifts Up the Humble
Surrender
A Call to Faith
December 15, 2005
“Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:20)
Ever since the Gospel of Jesus Christ was proclaimed, there have been people who have had a difficult time believing in the Virgin Birth.* For example, in the early centuries of Christianity, when tensions between church and synagogue were especially high, some claimed that Jesus was actually the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier. Of course, it was not only Christ’s enemies that questioned the miracle; even Mary wondered how it was possible that she, who had never been intimate with any man, could conceive and give birth to the Son of God (see Luke 1:34).
Don’t get me wrong: I am not trying to minimize the intellectual struggles that people have over the miracles reported in the Bible. By its very nature, faith requires that we accept something as true that we have neither seen nor verified. Such intellectual difficulties, however, are not limited to readers of the New Testament! To me, the probability of the universe being “caused” by an explosion of gases (i.e., the “Big Bang Theory”) seems as difficult to accept as the Bible’s assertion that Mary was in the state of virginity when she conceived Jesus.
The real problem with faith is not the intellectual issue of whether you should accept something as true that is contrary to your experience of the world. Rather, the key question is: Am I willing to follow the path that faith marks out for me? Or, to put it another way: Am I willing to believe something when to do so would call me to a world that, from my current vantage point, is not something I want to experience?
The real problem for Joseph was not an intellectual question concerning how Mary got pregnant. It was whether or not he would marry this woman whose pregnancy would shatter the respectable world in which he lived. How could he face people that would think that he and Mary were immoral?
In the same vein, the true challenge to our faith is not the abstract question of whether or not miracles occur—important as that question may be. Rather, it is the “problem” that faith creates! How willing am I to follow a God that I cannot see? How comfortable can I be in a universe open to the “interference” of Deity? How will I ever face the questions and judgments of unbelievers that think I’m either stupid or crazy? The observance of Advent is the call to faith: “Do not be afraid . . . God is with us.” [Pastor Mackett]
* The Bible’s teaching is more accurately described as a “virginal conception,” rather than “virgin birth,” for the emphasis is on the miracle that initiated Mary’s pregnancy and not on the conditions of Jesus’ birth.
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