Hb 1:1-4, 2:1-4

4 November 2007

All Saints’ Sunday

“When Faith is Blind”

            Usually, I have a problem with the phrase “blind faith.”  When I hear it, it suggests to me that, in order to have faith, people must be irrational, ignorant, and bigoted.  Blind faith, to me, suggests checking your brain at the door when you enter church.  It seems to mean that Christians should be less intelligent, or at least, pretend to be less intelligent, than their non-Christian counterparts.

            I find that both amazing and ridiculous.  Even more baffling is that some Christians believe they should put their brains on auto-pilot.  Jesus certainly doesn’t seem to agree.  After all, he says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mt 22:37).  I’ve tended to think of blind faith as a refusal to think, a refusal to open the eyes and see.

            But then, I’m not the final authority on all things faithful.  If that’s not good news, I don’t know what is!  It seems that there can be a positive way to look at the idea of blind faith.

            Still, as with so many things that are discussed, it’s very important to say what we mean by them.  It’s important to say what’s meant by, for example, “blind faith.”  Since I’ve already given low marks to such a thing, how can I call it positive?  Let me introduce you to someone who’s helped me see the difference.  He is the prophet Habakkuk.  He’s someone I think we all can relate to.

            Living at the same time as Jeremiah, Habakkuk deals with similar questions of faith and politics.  The record we have of him is much smaller; the book bearing his name has only three chapters.  But packed into that little book is some pretty fierce stuff.

            If you recall, when I preached about Jeremiah recently, I mentioned his so-called “confessions.”  They are the laments—the heartbroken complaints—about how God and others have treated him.

            Habakkuk has a beef with God, too.  His complaint, however, doesn’t seem to be so much about his fate, but about the entire country’s.  To be honest, we don’t know as much about Habakkuk personally.  We do know that Jeremiah was singled out for some especially cruel treatment.

            Anyway, right after Habakkuk’s introduction in the first verse, we get right to it:  “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?  Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” (v. 2).  It’s believed that he’s speaking near the end of the 7th century B. C. (610-600), just as Babylon is about to annex Judah by force of arms.

            The segment of Habakkuk’s life covered in the book is shorter, more focused, than that of his fellow prophet Jeremiah in his book.  But going along with that, his message is also more focused.  He’s not as wide-ranging as Jeremiah.  Habakkuk wants to know—actually, he demands to know—why God is apparently rewarding the wicked and punishing the good.

            Habakkuk is under few illusions.  He’s well aware of the corruption of his own nation.  But why send the Babylonians, of all people, to punish them?  The prophet believes that God has control at the international level, as well as at the interpersonal level.  So why let this crew—one that’s even more brutal—run wild?  How can God let the people be slaughtered by these thugs?

            What we have in the first part of the book is a dialogue between Habakkuk and his God.  The first four verses present his opening complaint.  Why isn’t God listening?  Why must Habakkuk be forced to see all this destruction and wrong-doing?  He says that “the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.  The wicked surround the righteous—therefore judgment comes forth perverted” (v. 4).

            The Lord’s response in verses 5 to 11 doesn’t exactly soothe Habakkuk’s fears.  What he gets is this:  “Look at the nations, and see!  Be astonished!  Be astounded!  For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told” (v. 5).  In other words, Habakkuk, you can’t possibly understand what’s going on!

            But you better believe it:  these boys from Babylon are bad to the bone.  They make up their own rules, just for themselves.  They make fun of other countries.  They’re so arrogant that “rulers are a laughing matter to them” (v. 10, NASB).  In fact, “their own might is their god!” (v. 11).

            It looks like Habakkuk’s worst fears are coming true.  In his response, finishing chapter 1, he resists; he argues with God.  He says, “Your eyes are too pure to behold evil, and you cannot look on wrongdoing; why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?” (v. 13).

            The prophet says it’s like all the people are fish—and the Babylonians are the ones holding the nets.  And they keep hauling in catch after catch.  What’s worse, they sacrifice to their nets; they make offerings to them.  They worship their weapons of warfare.  It’s like when nations put their military arsenal on parade, people applauding the missiles as they go rolling by.

            Before we get to God’s response to all of this, which is the part of our reading in chapter 2, let’s hold up a moment.

            At the heart of Habakkuk’s anguish is the fact that he is a person of faith.  He loves God.  He believes that God is perfectly good.  He says, “Your eyes are too pure to behold evil.”  He also believes that God is all-powerful.  That’s why he asks, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?”

So how is it possible that these terrible things are happening?  Someone without faith would more likely conclude that God just doesn’t care—or that there’s no God, anyway.  But Habakkuk stubbornly clings to faith, even though he can’t see any answers.  So in that sense, he has “blind faith.”  I think that’s an experience most, if not all, of us can relate to.

I find it interesting that when a natural disaster occurs, it’s often called an “act of God.”  An earthquake that flattens buildings…a hurricane that wipes out a city…these are “acts of God.”  You know:  stuff that’s destructive.  What about a pleasant sunny day?  What about softly falling snow?  Aren’t they acts of God?

We may or may not assign blame to God for earthquakes, for the weather, for disease, for the current state of functioning of our car, for any number of things.  But something is true about books in the Bible like Habakkuk:  they don’t pull any punches.

As Dan Clendenin has said, the pages of such books “are wet with the tears of human pain and suffering, just like our own lives.  Rather than gloss over, soft pedal, or sugar coat the hell and heartache we sometimes experience, the Biblical authors vent their emotions with brutal honesty.  They do not skate around an awkward topic.”[1]

During the Sanctuary of Hope service last week, Ian, as I also did at 11am, spoke on the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.  He pointed out that the tax collector’s prayer—“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”—isn’t the finely polished prayer the Pharisee would have offered.  The tax collector isn’t concerned with appearances.  His prayer is filled with raw emotion; it comes from the heart.  No, it comes from the gut.  He doesn’t fall prey to the kind of blind faith I mentioned at the beginning.

Clendenin goes on, “By venting their frustration, perplexity, and pain, the Biblical writers grant us permission to do the same.  There is no expectation for us to repress our questions, or to answer them prematurely with artificial optimism or superficial clichés.”  We too often fall into that trap.

“Habakkuk and his fellow protesters also remind us that we do not have to understand everything, or solve every problem…If venting our emotions is okay, so is honestly confessing and making peace with our ignorance.”[2]

I take it as a sign of mental and spiritual health in a community when people ask questions.  It means that, not only are people thinking, but that they feel free enough to engage each other in the stuff of life and faith.  Friends, I don’t hear enough questions being asked!  (You notice that I didn’t say “being asked to me”!  Be careful what you wish for!)

But maybe the point is made.  A big part of faith is not knowing—maybe it’s the biggest part.  After all, if we stay within the confines of what we do know for sure, then our faith is going to be pretty anemic!  And I’m increasingly convinced that faith is better served by learning to ask questions than by dispensing ready-made answers.

Someone else has written that “faith does not mean having answers; it means being willing to live without answers…Faith is having the security to be insecure.”[3]

Hand in hand with learning to question is learning to wait.  There’s another big part of faith:  waiting.  That’s something we impatient Americans really hate doing.  But as we move to chapter 2, Habakkuk’s image of waiting is one of the most striking and picturesque in the entire Bible.

“I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint” (v. 1).  The prophet has the same determination of someone standing watch.  He’s fixed to his post like a sentinel.  He’s not moving until he gets a response.  That’s the kind of stubbornness only faith can foster.

We need that same stubbornness, that same determination to wait on God.  We so rarely look for God.

That’s another key aspect of faith:  vision.  The idea of vision, of seeing, appears over and over in this little book of Habakkuk.  It’s introduced in the very first verse.  Soon afterward, God tells the prophet, “Look at the nations, and see!”  In turn, Habakkuk takes his position at the watchpost, and when God responds, he’s told to “write the vision” (v. 2).  These are only a few examples of the call to vision.

In case you haven’t already figured this out, Habakkuk doesn’t get answers to his questions.  He doesn’t know the answer to his cry, “How long?”  How long until the nightmare is over?

            The prophet may not get the answers he seeks, but that doesn’t mean he’s left without hope.  At the end of the book, he makes this declaration:  “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation” (3:17-18).  (That guy is as stubborn as ever!)

            Again, there’s some great imagery here.  The comment about fig trees not blossoming, and vines not producing fruit, is more than farmers griping about a bad harvest.  In ancient Hebrew thought, fig trees and vines are symbolic of peace and prosperity.  The fig tree in particular represents shalom, the well-being of God that rests upon the land.

            So on the verge of the unthinkable, a foreign army invading Jerusalem—Zion, the city of God—the fig tree shows no signs of blossoming.  But the prophet Habakkuk still affirms his faith.  And to me, that means so much more than shouting “Hallelujah, I got a brand new car!”  To hold on to the vision, even when it’s not in sight—especially when it’s not in sight—that’s the right kind of blind faith.

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