The Beauty of Jesus

What does it mean to walk by ‘faith not by sight’ (2 Corinthians 5)? Or to have faith the size of a mustard seed that moves mountains, only to be troubled if the mountains don’t move?

For the one outside Christianity looking in, it sounds like ‘blind’ faith, like jumping into the Grand Canyon – blindfolded. I’m being asked for a ‘leap of faith’.

Whilst it’s true the word ‘faith’ is all over the Bible (roughly 458 times!), it doesn’t have to be ‘blind’.

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and Christian with a perceptive take on faith. He lived in a context where cultural Christianity was destroying the real thing. The genuine Christian had become lost. He knew people reciting the creed perfectly, but he didn’t see a living, breathing, dynamic faith.

For Kierkegaard, Christianity was a personal relationship with a personal God. Evidence - of which there is much for Christianity - will only get you so far. There comes a time when evidence, reason and rationality have to take a back seat to faith. It turns out that this sort of faith is more like trust, which is crucial to all personal relationships.

Trust is giving myself over to something I don’t fully understand yet find so compelling it is worth everything.

People often say, ‘prove Jesus is true and I’ll follow him’. But Jesus says, ‘follow me and it will prove itself’. Often, we begin with the question, ‘Is it true?’ and then ask, ‘is it good and beautiful?’

But what if we reversed that? What if we saw the goodness and beauty first and then saw it to be true? Goodness and beauty is what we want to follow, to be near. To see the beauty and goodness of Christ is to grasp how eternally trustworthy he is. —Rev. Greg Webster

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