Fearless Faith

by John Fischer

Chapter One
The Prayer of Jesus

A dying man’s request.

You could say it was a dying man’s last request--the last will and testament of the Son of God. To whom is he going to leave his inheritance? Who is going to carry out God’s will on earth, and with what will they do it? There is no gold tucked away in a Jerusalem vault, no Swiss bank account to hand over. His resources are not of this world. That is why his prayer is so important.

Jesus has invested his life for the world and is about to pour out his last drop of blood for its salvation. But what Jesus will do after that is just as remarkable. He is about to delegate the kingdom of God. He’s going to hand over his personal possession--his labor of love and sacrifice--to someone else. Someone else will continue the work he began. Like a starting pitcher who has held the opposing team scoreless through eight innings of a one run ball game, Jesus is standing on the mound, waiting to hand the ball to some rookie reliever sauntering in from the bull pen, chewing on a wad of gum.

No wonder he prayed so hard that night.

“I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you” (John 17:11).

That would be us. He’s talking about you and me--all believers in him. We are the ones with the ball now. And he gave it to us with the bases loaded and nobody out. It’s a dangerous situation to inherit.

“I have given them your word and the world has hated them” (John 17:14).

The world was not a friendly place for Jesus and his followers. Following Jesus meant putting oneself at risk. Protection was paramount in his prayer, both while he was here and after he was gone.

“Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name--the name you gave me--so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe” (John 17:11-12).

It must have been comforting to have known his presence. To know you were safe because Jesus was there with you. He was there in the boat when the storm came, there in the crowd when the riot broke out, there when your best friend died, there when the Pharisees grew angry, there when the demons came out. The disciples had little to fear when he was around. But he wouldn’t always be there. He was going away. What would they do without him? More important: What do we do without his physical presence, for we are the ones he is really thinking about here when he prays.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message” (John 17:20).

That would be us, of course.

“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one” (John 17:15).

Ah yes, there it is--the part of this prayer that tells us what to expect. This is where he reveals what he intends to do, and not do, for us. And what he won’t do is as important as what he will. He doesn’t intend for us to be removed from the world, but to be protected in the middle of it. He doesn’t want us removed from danger, he wants us surrounded by danger on every hand--but safe from the evil one.

It is important to realize, in our current dilemma, that the prayers of Jesus are more effective than ours. Our prayers are attached to our human need, a limited view of our situation, and the options we have for relief. Sometimes our prayers are no more than wishes. The prayers of Jesus, on the contrary, are completely in accord with God’s will because he and the Father are one. If Jesus prays for our protection, then it is because he knows God fully intends to protect us. And if he prays for us not to me removed from the world, it is because he has no intention of rescuing us out of the world. This is not a well-intentioned wish on the part of Jesus. It is the will of God to leave us in the world and meet us with all the provisions and protection we need to be here and be involved in the world. Anything short of this is less than what God intends for us.

Two things are clear about these petitions from the last request of a dying man who also happened to be the Son of God. The first is that he expects us to be in the world, and the second is that in doing so we will be in danger. Apparently Jesus has no intention of relieving us of the cause of that danger. There would be no need for him to pray for our protection if this were not so. Notice also that there are no qualifiers to this statement--as in “keep the world from getting too bad so it isn’t so hard on them.” No matter how bad the world gets, he still wants us in it.

I suppose someone could get a little upset at Jesus for this if they wanted to. It’s a little like falling into a well and having someone yell down from the top, “Don’t worry down there; I’m praying for you.” Gee thanks, we would want to say. Why don’t you try pulling me up? Of course we would not really say this because it’s Jesus up there, and it would sound like we were accusing him of not knowing what he was doing. It can be somewhat disconcerting, though, when you think that Jesus could easily rescue us from our worldly predicament but doesn’t.

A separate world

This last will and testament of Jesus seems to defy a long-standing tradition: the separation of Christians from the world and worldly things in order to remain pious and pure. This doctrine of separation has its roots in tradition rather than in Scripture. The biblical doctrine of separation has primarily to do with what happens in one’s mind and heart. For instance, later in this prayer, Jesus prays for us to be sanctified (set apart) by the truth of God’s word. Since knowing God’s word is an inner reality, this injunction would apply to a spiritual separation, not a physical pulling away from culture and society, a mind-set, not a physical movement. Likewise, when Paul tells us in Romans 12:2, not to be conformed to the pattern of this world but to be transformed “by the renewing of your mind,” it is an appeal to a different way of thinking, not a change of address.

I grew up entrenched in this doctrine of separation, so I understand how threatening it can be to let go of it. I can still remember when as a small child I fingering a little sculpture my parents used to keep on a shelf over the kitchen sink. It was of three monkeys. One had his hands over his eyes; one had his hands over his ears; and one had his hands over his mouth. “See no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil” was the message it conveyed. This kind of thinking was very popular among Christians at the time, and it helped justify our separation from the world. That separation took on the form of cultural abstinence (no movies, clubs, or theaters) and behavioral taboos (no dancing, card playing, or make-up).

We were to keep ourselves separate from the world in order to be fully committed Christians. Scriptural sayings such as “come out from among them, and be ye separate... and touch not the unclean thing” (2 Corinthians 6:17 KJV) and “abstain from all appearances of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22 KJV) were constantly being employed to justify a separatist lifestyle. Little did I know that these verses were being quoted out of context and that the three little monkeys were speaking for Confucius and not the Bible. In fact, Jesus taught that it was not what goes into someone that defiles them, but what comes out, because what comes out comes from a heart that is deceitful and desperately wicked. I believe now that the power of these pharisaical controls are hard to resist. We will always gravitate to an easily defined external spirituality rather than to a more ambiguous, internal judgment that makes us all personally responsible for our own decisions and conclusions. I still feel this struggle today. I still squirm when a Christian college student responds to a talk I give on personal responsibility in cultural matters by the inevitable question: “But where do you draw the line?” A separate world is an easier world. It places more responsibility on others to come up with what is acceptable and what is not. It’s also a safer world.

A safer world.

Many Christians today who continue to hold to an extreme doctrine of separation have found a new ally in a multitude of things “Christian” that have been wrestled from the world and made “safe” through a Christian industry that markets to their specific desires and needs. A proliferation of Christian goods and services has resulted, making it possible for Christians to think that by buying Christian rather than worldly goods and services, they are separate from the world.

On the surface, this cultural separation masks itself as a form of godliness, but a closer look reveals an enterprise driven more by self-preservation than anything. “We may bemoan a moral decline in the country. Our actual concern, if truth be known, is not to see a vital Christianity flourish, but rather to secure a more orderly and less violent society in which to live out our comfortable and self-satisfied lives.”1 In other words, we want a safer world. We are not as concerned about the salvation of those in the world as much as we want them to behave better around us for our comfort.

This is where so much of our current attitude and approach to the world differs from God’s will as expressed in the prayer of Jesus. We want to be safe in a safer world; God wants us safe in an unsafe world. We want to protect ourselves by removing ourselves from danger; God wants to protect us in the middle of danger. These differences may seem insignificant on the surface, but in fact they are huge, involving entirely different worldviews and ramifications.

This theory of safety through removing ourselves from the world could be one of the most dangerous doctrines to invade the church in recent years. It is now thought to be more spiritual to be safe from the world than to interact with it. A separatist Christian monologue has replaced meaningful dialogue with the world around us. Our influence on culture often relies more on some kind of pressure from without--boycotts, marches, and political legislation--than on any kind of friendly presence from within. The high road of involvement, interaction, and mutual respect for those in the world has been abandoned in favor of the low road of disengagement, isolation, and scorn. Thousands of Christians lobby for conservative legislation; few go into politics. Thousands of Christians protest abortion clinics; few provide for single moms and adopt babies. Thousands boycott blasphemous movies; few seek a vocation in Hollywood.

Instead of engaging our culture in any kind of meaningful way, we have often preferred a siege mentality, retreating into the safety of our Christian subculture. We are more comfortable fighting culture than we are being constructively involved in it. Ironically, on every front we mount highly charged rhetorical battles with a worldly culture, while at the same time, within the walls of our subculture, we try to imitate the worldly culture’s nuance.

This retreat from the world turns into a sort of cultural catch-22. The more we remove ourselves from the world, the worse the world gets in the absence of a Christian influence and the stronger the argument becomes to stay away from the world. If we were training our children to understand and critically examine the world’s popular art, literature, music, and film instead of limiting them to safe Christian versions of these things, we might have a different world waiting for us in the next generation. But it may not be too late for us to rethink our approach.

Undermining the prayer of Jesus.

In this Christian subculture, where safety and protection are seen as being of utmost importance, the prayer of Jesus can be heard as a challenge to our cherished thinking. We have nullified part of what he prayed on our behalf. What’s the good of praying for our protection when we have already removed ourselves from danger? One could even build an argument that the Christian subculture we have created is the result of, at best, a kind of gullible disobedience. We don’t like the world we have, and we don’t want to be in it, so why not create one we like better? And so everyone follows along with their checkbooks, without really thinking it through.

It’s understandable that we would want to protect ourselves and our children from the world, given the nature of the world’s dangers, but Jesus prayed for this already. The assumption is that he has more important things for us to do in the world than worrying about keeping ourselves safe from it. Christ’s prayer not to take us out of the world but to protect us in it should make us think twice about dedicating so much time and energy to building an alternative Christian subculture. Could it be that God is not against the world after all, at least not in the way we’ve usually thought?

If we take Jesus’ prayer seriously, then removing ourselves from the world undermines the will of God and the prayer of Jesus. The extent to which we have removed ourselves from the world for the sake of safety is the extent to which we may be missing the provision of God in the midst of danger as well as the mission of God in leaving us here in the first place.

Jesus never put walls around himself. He walked openly and fearlessly among the sick, the sinners, the social outcasts, and all those who bitterly opposed everything he did and said. Jesus was vulnerable at all times and relied, as we must also, on his Father for protection. In public, he was almost always among enemies. On numerous occasions he narrowly escaped death at the hands of Pharisees or the riotous crowds they incited. He knew it was not his time. Compare his existence in the world to ours, in contemporary America, and note how carefully we have removed ourselves from danger. We are upset if we have to endure a dirty joke or swearing, as if our righteousness is offended by having to be in the proximity of such behavior.

Jesus did not form an alternative culture with his disciples and set them up against the world. He chose 12 men and then took them with him into the world. He took them into the marketplace and into homes of strangers. He sent them out as sheep among wolves. He did not come, as some hoped, to bring a political kingdom. He talked about a kingdom come, but he taught them that the kingdom was within them. He even recognized that his followers were going to have to learn allegiance to both kingdoms at the same time (“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” [Matthew 22:21]).

He called them to a fearless faith--a faith that had no earthly home, and no cultural identity.

Moses, pointing.

I am ashamed, I must admit, that there is not more danger in my own life. Sometimes I feel a little like Moses when he looked across the Jordan and told a murmuring, bickering crowd of Israelites that they should be on the other side of the river where all the giants and the adventures were when he had yet to cross over himself. Some of the concerns I’ll raise in these pages come from a dissatisfaction with my own choices--choices that in some ways I cannot alter. Indeed, the very subculture I am questioning in this book most likely put the book in your hands. I certainly have not personally resolved all the issues I raise herein. I’m still learning what it means to be fearless in my faith.

Though I write strongly at times, I am aware that I am biting the hand that feeds me. I would like to claim for myself abandonment to the truth at all costs--to think of myself as John the Baptist in the wilderness--but I am not. I am more like Moses, pointing.

I write of what I know, but not always of what I have experienced. There are others who are further along than I, and chances are they would not bother to speak out about a fearless faith because they are too involved in having one. Sometimes I wonder if this is not the kind of hypocrisy that haunts all writers. We write of what we are stretching for more than of what we have embraced and know fully. If we knew it, we would do it, not bother writing about it. Our writing is our reaching out.

That’s why I am including in this book the comments of others who have proved themselves to be more fearless than I am. I respect their example. I want their voices to be heard.

A fearless faith.

We all need to think through why we are here and what our faith is for. By its very nature, faith is dangerous. It puts us at risk in a world at odds with the One we follow and stretches us constantly by the demands it puts on us. And yet there is a glory and an excitement to the risks of faith. We often wonder what motivates those who attempt dangerous feats--competitors in the extreme sports or the Evel Knievels of today. Maybe it’s because there is something built into all of us that embraces risk. We can meet danger with either fear or excitement. When fear rules, it’s because deep down we don’t believe we have what it takes to face the danger. Excitement comes from knowing and believing that we do.

A fearless faith, then, is one that takes full advantage of the prayer of Jesus. A fearless faith is a faith that is not driven by comfort, safety, and security. It is a faith not necessarily shared by our companions, a faith that takes mental discernment to maintain, a faith that is vulnerable and unprotected--even weak--without the prayer of Jesus to strengthen it and give it courage. A fearless faith does not need a cultural identity to thrive, for it thrives and flourishes in the heart of the believer.

Real faith is always at risk; the risk is part of what makes it real.

Or as Jesus said in his prayer: “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” The world was not a safe place for Jesus. Why would we think it would be any different for us?