Recovering Our Nerve [Firebrand Big Read]

Photo by Caleb Lumingkit on Unsplash

If you were involved in the charismatic movement in 2019, you probably remember a number of predictions that the next year would be the year of “20/20 vision.” It seemed a bit contrived at the time, and I’m not aware that anyone making this claim also prophesied a global pandemic. As far as I know, the vast majority of humanity was utterly blindsided by this tragedy. Yet while the “20/20 vision” claims might seem like false prophecy, I suggest they are more right than the prophets themselves knew. Just as no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of the prophet’s own interpretation, contemporary prophetic speech is also the interpretive responsibility of the church. 

The year 2020 showed us very clearly some things about the church, particularly in the Global West. She was far more fragile than we had known. Many of her attendees would not return after the pandemic. Of those who maintain interest in the church, many are to this day content to observe a service in their pajamas rather than participate bodily in her rituals and practices. When confronted with widespread suffering and death, the first recourse of many Christians was to retreat into political tribalism and accusation rather than confront fear and sorrow with the gospel of life and peace. We do see more clearly now—just not in the way some had thought we would. 

COVID-19 did not create lasting problems in the church so much as it revealed them. A comfortable church can easily succumb to that cardinal sin of sloth. A church seeking respectability among those who do not share our faith or values will have abdicated her prophetic voice. If we don’t exercise our muscles in the areas of evangelism, preaching, and discipleship, they will atrophy. If we never turn and row against the prevailing winds, they will eventually push us off course into irrelevance and death. We pat ourselves on the back for “speaking truth to power” when we have lost a clear sense of what that truth is and what is at stake in its proclamation. 

Over time, the Western church lost its nerve. My prayer for 2025 is that we will begin to see a recovery of it. In what follows I’ll offer a few steps Christians can take to this end. 

Trust God 

We normally translate the Greek word pistis as faith, but it also means trust, confidence, and allegiance. In other words, faith involves not only belief, but attitudes and behaviors. To have faith in God is not simply to assent to a creed. It is to organize our lives on the principle that the living, thinking, loving, saving God revealed in Scripture is more real than anyone or anything else we encounter in our lives. 

This means we cannot think of God primarily as an idea, but as an agent. God does things. Since Schleiermacher, the emphasis among many Christians has been on an affective experience of God, rather than God’s saving work in history. Since Ritschl, many have thought of Christianity primarily as an ethical program, rather than a saving relationship with a living God. Since Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel movement, it has been common to stress our responsibility to do good in society while underemphasizing God’s providential agency. It seems Christians have a particular difficulty with a both/and understanding of God, one in which we acknowledge the sovereignty and power of God while embracing the ethical responsibilities of Christian discipleship.

Put more simply, how can we trust God if we do not believe God acts in meaningful ways within human life? What is there to trust? 

Trusting God means obedience, and obedience to God means reliance upon the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. In his sermon “Of the Church,” John Wesley wrote, 

Yea, suppose God has now thoroughly cleansed our heart and scattered the last remains of sin; yet how can we be sensible enough of our own helplessness, our utter ability to all good, unless we are every hour, yea, every moment endued with power from on high? Who is able to think one good thought, or to form one good desire, unless by that Almighty power which worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure? We have need even in this state of grace to be thoroughly and continually penetrated with a sense of this. Otherwise we shall be in perpetual danger of robbing God of his honour, by glorifying something we have received as though we had not received it (Sermon 74, Bicentennial Edition, II.22).

This obedience extends to every part of our lives. Do we trust God with our families? Do we trust him with our careers? Do we trust him enough to stand on principle when the “smart” move is to go along and get along? If so, how is this trust made manifest? A life of trust in God will at times make little sense to those who do not share our faith. That is as it should be. We see the world differently. We believe there is a God who loves us and is somehow—often in ways unseen—making all things work for good for those who love him and are called according to his purposes. 

Bad things will happen. We must be honest about our finitude and the propensity for evil that lies within the human heart. We see the consequences of mortality and sin every day. Such is the nature of the in-between time in which we live. The kingdom of God is present but not in its eschatological fullness. Our Scriptures repeatedly demonstrate an awareness of this point, but the God they reveal is nevertheless present in the warp and woof of human life. 

Tell the truth 

This is a hard one. To begin with, truth is not always easy to discern. We do, however, hold fast to certain truth claims as Christians. For example, we believe there is one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe God became incarnate in Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose from the dead. We believe this same God abides with us in the person of the Holy Spirit. We also believe that the world is not morally neutral. God has created the universe not only with a physical structure, but with a moral structure. While we may not always perceive clearly how our actions relate to this moral structure, our goal is that our thoughts, words, and deeds will be consistent with God’s creative design. In short, we make certain metaphysical claims, and a related set of moral claims, and we believe these to be true, even if we don’t apprehend truth in its entirety. 

It is not enough to prefer the truth to lies. We must love the truth. When pressed, you will not tell the truth if you do not love the truth, if truth is not so precious that to see it trampled is painful. If you love God, however, you will love truth. Augustine wrote that the essence of reality is “the Trinity, one God, alone, great, true, truthful, the truth” (On the Trinity 8.2). In other words, God is truth, and all the things we think of as true are derivative of God’s creative work. When we discover the truths of math and science, we gaze upon God’s handiwork. When we reach conclusions about the moral life, the aim is to align with God’s truth as closely as we are able. Wesley remarked, “The will of God is a path leading straight to God. This will of man which once ran parallel with it is now another path, not only different from it, but in our present state directly contrary to it” (Sermon 48, “Self-denial,” I.4, Bicentennial Edition). 

In John 16:8-11, Jesus teaches that the Holy Spirit “will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” As the special recipients of the Spirit’s teaching, it is our responsibility to convey what he has taught us about sin, righteousness, and judgment. This is not the way to win any popularity contests, but it is, in fact, an act of love. It is cruel to withhold the truth revealed to us when that truth has the capacity to lead people into salvation. We often say we do not want to offend because we love our neighbors, but in our more honest moments we might admit it is because we fear the way others may react. Yet we will be accountable for our obedience to Christ’s command to make disciples. 

In 2 Thes 2:10 Paul writes of those who “refused to love the truth and so be saved.” They chose to remain in error and thus to live apart from God. This is the case for many people today. Because they do not love truth, they inevitably fall into error. In fact, the proclamation of the truth about Jesus Christ and the way of life that comes from understanding God’s saving work in and through him may evoke resentment and opposition. To stand up to this opposition will require a recovery of nerve. When God instructed Ezekiel to go and speak to Israel, he sent the prophet into the teeth of intense opposition. Yet God prepared him to face down those who would oppose him: “Like the hardest stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead; do not fear them or be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house” (Ezek 3:9). God instilled in Ezekiel the virtue of fortitude, one of the four cardinal virtues (along with prudence, justice, and temperance). The sanctifying God of our faith will do the same for us today. 

Humble yourself 

Humility is not self-deprecation. It is understanding who we are in relation to God and other people. Christ is our example. He not only taught humility (for example, Mark 9:35; 10:42-44), but embodied it. Even he came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Paul’s kenosis (emptying) hymn of Philippians 2:5-11 describes the humility of Christ, who emptied himself. He humbled himself, even to the point of death on a cross. Cyril of Alexandria comments on this passage, “He ‘humbled himself,’ according to the Scriptures, ‘taking on himself the form of a slave.’ He became like us that we might become like him. The work of the Spirit seeks to transform us by grace into a perfect copy of his humbling” (Festal Letter 10.4, quoted in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, ed. Mark J. Edwards, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, IVP, 1999). The work of God in our lives makes us increasingly Christlike. 

How does humility relate to the recovery of our nerve? Humility means, in part, that we find our identity in God’s work within us. In a world of self-creation, we respond that, no, we do not create ourselves, but are both created and made new by God. It is God who makes us who we are. “Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing made say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or the thing formed say of the one who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?” (Isa 29:16). The very act of submitting to God requires separation from many of the values of the ambient culture, and to bear the consequences of a life differently lived. 

To return again to Wesley’s sermon “Of the Church,” he wrote, 

We are called to walk, first, ‘with all lowliness’; to have that mind in us which is in Christ Jesus, not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, to be little, and poor, and mean, and vile in our own eyes; to know ourselves as also we are known, by him to whom all hearts are open; to be deeply sensible of our own unworthiness, of the universal depravity of our nature (in which dwelleth no good thing), prone to all evil, averse to all good, insomuch that we are not only sick but dead in trespasses and sins, till God breathes upon the dry bones, and creates life by the fruit of his lips (II.21). 

Humility is part of the character of a Christian, the result of the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work. Wesley continues in the same sermon, 

Walk with long-suffering. This is nearly related to meekness, but implies something more. It carries on the victory already gained over all your turbulent passions, notwithstanding all the powers of darkness, all the assaults of evil men or evil spirits. It is patiently triumphant over all opposition, unmoved though all the waves and storms thereof go over you. Though provoked ever so often, it is still the same, quiet and unshaken; never being ‘overcome of evil, but overcoming evil with good’ (II.25). 

That takes courage. These are muscles we haven’t used in the Western church for some time. They have atrophied. If we are to live in this way, it will require a recovery of nerve. 

Find solace in the church 

If we feel the sting of social disconnection due to our allegiance to Christ, we can find solace among the community of those who share the hope that is within us. When I worship on Sunday mornings, I feel as if I have stepped into an ark amid the rising waters of madness. We pray in expectation of the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. We praise the Holy Trinity. Our pastors proclaim the word of God from Scripture. We receive the body and blood of Christ through which the Spirit heals our sin-sick souls. I need this. I need the solace of God’s manifest presence and a community that cries out for his power to save. The church is my refuge, rooted in the life of my redeemer, sustained by his living presence. 

The church as an ark is an old image. In 1 Peter 3 the ark and the waters that surrounded it are a prefiguring of baptism. It is also a notion taken up by Cyprian, Augustine, and Jerome. For example, Augustine comments, 

That Noah, with his family is saved by water and wood, as the family of Christ is saved by baptism, as representing the suffering of the cross…. That the beams of the ark are fastened within and without with pitch, to signify by compact union the forbearance of love, which keeps the brotherly connection from being impaired, and the bond of peace from being broken by the offenses which try the Church either from without or from within. For pitch is a glutinous substance, of great energy and force, to represent the ardor of love which, with great power of endurance, bears all things in the maintenance of spiritual communion (Contra Faustum, Book XII.14).

Not everyone experiences the church in this way. At times in my life the church has felt less like an ark and more like the Titanic. Nevertheless, we can and should aim for communities that embody the values of our faith. God is love, and churches should bear witness to that love in thought, word, and deed. Love is at times hard to receive. Sometimes correction is love. Sometimes love requires a hard word. Sometimes presence amid heartbreak is love. At other times, love may involve sacrificial giving, quiet service, or words of affirmation. Love means we live in agreement with the will of God. If we love as Christ loved, however, God will use our faithfulness to change lives, to save the lost, to turn weeping into joy. 

I wrote recently of the role of spiritual mothers and fathers and the church as a family. The breakdown of traditional family structures leaves a vacuum. People need not just community, but family. Children need parenting. Youth and young adults need people who can walk beside them and provide guidance and support. We live amid an epidemic of loneliness that can be healed only by the development of real, meaningful community. The superficial relationships facilitated by social media do not make us feel less lonely, but more so. Something deeper is required. In the early church, many Christians had been alienated from their families because of faith in Christ, but the church became a new family focused on lives of obedience to God. I’ve seen the church function with this depth of connection outside of the U.S., but only rarely within it. As the traditional social fabric of the Western world continues to unravel, we have the opportunity to invite people into an older and better way of life. And when our nerve falters, the faith of other believers will bolster us. 

The choices we make today about how we will live as the church of Jesus Christ will have generational implications. I am not content to accept a narrative of inexorable decline. God is more powerful than that. And yet we have a part to play. God has entrusted us with the message of salvation, and our response matters. Will we trust in God? Will we tell the truth, even when it is most difficult? Will we walk in humility, in willingness to bear the reproach of an unbelieving world? When we grow weary, what will we do? Will we give up, or will we find our repose among the community of faith that Christ called into being? Ours is a high calling, and a great deal is at stake. The church must recover its nerve if it is to bear witness faithfully in the days ahead.

David F. Watson is Lead Editor of Firebrand. He serves as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.