I’ve Lost My Faith
Compiled by Randy Robison
"I've lost my faith in religion," confessed the widow of a young naval officer lost in action. With her two children she had been living in Florida. She was restless, confused, heartbroken and desperate.
She spoke with the chaplain and told him of the breakdown of all she had believed in. She added that she did not think that she would let her children attend Sunday School.
"Why bring them up to believe something I no longer believe myself?" she asked.
She seemed more disillusioned then embittered. Her soul was filled with sorrow, grief and pain. Everything had crashed. Religion had failed her. Her religion was gone.
If her case was an isolated one, it would be serious enough. But hers is not an isolated case. There are the families of the 9/11 victims. There are loved ones of those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are those who lost so much in Hurricane Katrina. And there will be more to come.
The chaplain was gentle and wise. "Would you like your children to grow up as unbelievers? Do you really want them to be without any faith in God, not to know God? Would you want them to have nothing to believe in? If you reject faith in God, what should we substitute for it? People believe in something, you know. What do you want them to believe?
"Would it not be better to give them something that would account for the universe? Would you like to live in a community where there were no churches, no Sunday Schools, or the Bible was never read or taught to believe, where nobody prayed, nobody ever sung a hymn, nobody ever worshiped?"
"Well, no," the woman replied. " But I have lost my faith in religion."
"What do you mean by religion?" asked the chaplain. "Do you not to believe that people should do justly, love mercy and walk humbly through life?"
"Yes, I think so," she admitted.
"Do you believe that we should love God completely, and love our neighbors, too?” the chaplain continued.
"Yes, of course."
"Do you believe that we should help orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep ourselves untarnished by the world? In other words, to do good and to be good?"
"Yes, I believe that," the widow said softly.
"Well, there you have an Old Testament prophet, a New Testament apostle, and Jesus Christ himself saying that these things are religion. If you still believe in these things, you still believe in true religion. You haven't lost your faith in religion after all. You have not lost your faith in the things that we are fighting for.
"Let me tell you what you have lost your faith in," the chaplain explained. "You have lost faith in your own theology -- ideas that you had built up in your own mind. It is not religion that has broken down, but your understanding of religion.
"You thought that just because you went to church, said your prayers and went through all the motions of conventional religion, that you and your loved ones would be entitled to some special privileges. But Jesus Christ never promised His followers that they would not have to face danger. On the contrary, He warned that there would be danger, and lots of it. He said, ‘In the world you will have tribulations, but don't fear, I have overcome the world.’
"God promises us peace; not peace in the world around us, but peace inside our own hearts. He does not promise to rescue us from trouble, but to rescue us in trouble. Your theology had become a sort of charm -- a religious rabbit’s foot. But your faith was in your own ideas rather than in God's.
"True religion is a power that enables us to live in harmony with God and our fellow men in the world as it is. True religion faces the facts of life and never blinks. True religion delivers us from fear, even in the valley of the shadow of death. And in the end, true religion promises a final victory, because there is no death -- just eternal life."
This Week
Examine your theology in the face of war, natural disaster and other tribulations. Is your belief system based on your own ideas or on God’s as expressed in the Bible?
Prayer
”Lord, show me the true meaning of religion. Show me how to be a lighthouse for you in the midst of the storm.”
This piece was adapted from the new book, The Wartime Sermons of Dr. Peter Marshall (Clarion Call). Dr. Marshall served as the pastor of the historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington DC and the Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. The sermon entitled "I've Lost My Faith in Religion" was delivered on April 30, 1944, at the height of World War II.
