Chapter 14 Little Faith
Faith is invisible to our eyes, and it doesn't happen when I decide to have faith. I remember a chemistry lab in my school days. There was a yellow liquid in a thin test tube. I used an eyedropper to drop drops of yellow into that test tube. One drop, two drops... five drops, no change in color, and then the sixth drop changed the color of the test tube to red. The value at which the color changes is called the threshold. I've seen many people in my life whose little faith didn't change color, but turned into real faith the moment an eyedropper drop of grace landed in the test tube. John Bunyan portrays a man of Little Faith in The Pilgrim's Progress.
Christian and Hopeful were on their way again when suddenly a person popped into Christian's head.
"Mr Hopeful," he said, "I suddenly remembered a good man who lives near here."
"His name was Little Faith and his home was Sincerity. Little Faith, who was on a pilgrimage with us, happened to be sitting there and fell asleep. Just then, on the path coming down from the wide gate, there appeared three fierce thugs, whose names were Brothers in Faint-Heart, Mistrust, and Guilt. When the thugs saw that Little Faith was there, they sped up and came running. At that moment, Little Faith had just woken up and was about to start his pilgrimage. The thieves chased after him and threatened him. Little Faith was frightened and lost all strength to run away. In the end, Little Faith was robbed of his money, beaten by the thieves, and fell down."
"But didn't they take all of Little Faith's possessions?"
"No. The place where he had hidden his jewellery was not searched by them, so they were safe; but from what I heard, the good man suffered a great deal, for he lost most of his living."
"That is very remarkable indeed; and though the robbers left it out, it is by no means surprising that little Faith hid it so well, for he was so disheartened to see them coming, that he could not have exerted such strength and skill to hide anything."
"That is true, but the reason why Little Faith did not lose that good thing is due more to a good Providence than to his own efforts."
Little Faith (2022)
"He was the possessor of Little Faith, a sincere but unfortunately fragile faith, which may well be the faith of our neighbours, who are not always alert and watchful, who are swayed by the ways of the world, who suffer from Satan's domination, and who are liable to fall into his snares."
People of Little Faith
As a Christian, I have to confess that I am a person of little faith. The Bible is full of examples of the little faith of Jesus' disciples. First up is Thomas the Doubter, who refused to acknowledge Jesus' resurrection. He believed in Jesus only after touching the nail marks. "Do you believe because you have seen? Blessed are those who believe without seeing," Jesus said.
Doubting Thomas (2023)
Peter was a man of little faith when he followed Jesus. Three times he denied that he knew Jesus, and once he walked on the choppy Sea of Galilee. For a moment he was able to get out of the boat and walk on the water because he believed the Lord's words, "Come to me." But then he saw the wind blowing on the sea, and he was afraid, and he fell into the water, and he cried out, "Lord, save me." Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him, and he rebuked him, saying, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" And he said, "You of little faith!
Oh, you of little faith!" (2022)
The Lord tells us not to live in fear in the world's way. "Do not be afraid... Come and follow me... See where I am... Go out and preach the gospel... For the kingdom of God is at hand... I have many dwelling places in my house... Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."
Even though we live as Christians, there is hardly a day in our lives that passes without fear, anxiety, worry, and distractions from within and without. These dark forces have crept into every corner of our world to the point where it is impossible to escape them completely. Even today, I can hear the Lord's words to Peter ringing in my ears, "O you of little faith, why did you doubt?"
I got out of bed this morning and painted a watercolour of a little man of faith from the Bible. It's Nicodemus. The reason I painted Nicodemus is because I was once a Nicodemus. In the Bible, Nicodemus wasn't even an unbeliever in Jesus. He was a man whose social status and prestige prevented him from fully embracing Jesus. He came to Jesus at night.
"Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old, and has entered into the second womb?" Jesus answered him, "I tell you thr true, no one can enter into the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit." (John 3:1-6)
Nicodemus Finds Jesus(2022)
Nicodemus was a wealthy and prominent man at the time, and quite well known in Jerusalem. He was a Pharisee and was already familiar with the rumours that many of the people were following Jesus. That's why he chose to come to Jesus at night, away from the public eye. And he responds to Jesus with a paraphrased answer. Clearly, as an intellectual, he knew what Jesus was saying, but in that moment he acted like a fool.
He admired Jesus and wanted to follow his words, but he was afraid of being labelled as a Jesus believer. I was a Christian too, but I had no intention of giving up my zoological research, stork restoration, teaching, and speaking engagements, even though they were more for my glory than God's.
Jesus at the centre of life
I had a fellow professor in physics. He was a sincere and reputable man. I asked him if he believed in the existence of God. "Do you know the German physicist Carl von Weizsäcker?" he asked. I brought up Carl von Weizsäcker not only because he was a physicist, but also because his brother Richard von Weizsäcker was the President of Germany when I was studying in Germany. "He was a world-renowned physicist and philosopher who studied nuclear fusion inside stars," he told me, "and he was also at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, Germany, and he was a Protestant physicist." It was my fellow physics professor who brought this information to my attention through a web search that now has artificial intelligence. What caught my attention even more was that he said, "About half of all Nobel Prize-winning or world-renowned physicists are of faith." I couldn't help but be mildly surprised that so many physicists with the best brains on the planet believed in the existence of God. My colleagues, who are natural scientists but specialise in biology, are far less likely to believe in the existence of God, as far as I know.
One small hint that physicists are surprisingly religious in the natural sciences can be found in the usual media interviews of the well-known Big Bang Theory physicist Dr Stephen Hawking, who, while calling himself an atheist, once talked about acknowledging the existence of God. In a media interview before his death in 2018, when a reporter asked him, "Do you believe there is a God?" he refused to answer, and when asked why, he said, "Because if I said I believed there was a God, everyone would claim that I believed in the same God they believed in." Rather, he said, "I believe that the universe is governed by the laws of science. These laws must have been laid down by God. But God does not interfere to break these laws.' And he avoids a straight answer by saying, 'It is very unlikely that factors like the Big Bang could have produced anything like the universe we live in. ' At another point, he said: 'It would be difficult to explain why the universe had to start this way, other than that it was the handiwork of a God who decided to create beings like us'.
My fellow physics professor's family went to church, so he wasn't an atheist. It's just that there are a lot of people around us who have the kind of little faiths that John Bunyan brought to the forefront of the story. My fellow physics professor had this idea that "there's a 50/50 chance that there is a God, so I might as well believe and go to heaven!". I don't want my faith in Jesus to be some kind of insurance policy. If someone were to ask me, "Who is the centre of your life?" would I be able to answer without hesitation, "Jesus, who called me to follow him"? For me right now, I hope and pray that the struggle to be a full member of a community of faith will be a struggle that permeates my flesh, a struggle that involves renouncing many idols and pretences from time to time, and choosing, over and over again, to follow Jesus alone.
