Constantius wrote: “I’m not sure about anybody else, but most of the time I think I know my faith more than I feel it.”  I must vigorously, though unpleasantly, agree with my brother.  Indeed, I posted something like this thought on my own blog last evening.

In my case, however, it is less that I know my faith but that it doesn’t always strike me deeply and meaningfully, and rather more the case that, for all my knowing, for all those moments of deep feeling, I do not do what I know to be true and necessary.  Mine is, perhaps, too, too close a cousin to that sort of faith St. James refers to, a demonic sort of mere belief.

I have been trained to have a certain facility with concepts and ideas, to be able to discern and make valid connections.  This is a good thing, and the Lord’s gift and providential ordering of my life.  It does not make me smart, let alone wise, but it does enable me to at least avoid some pitfalls (though hardly all).  It concomitantly increases my responsibilities and obligations.
I am, in some ways, blessed by all this.  My trials are not usually those related to the defense of Christianity’s truth claims.  From my upfront seating, I recognize reason’s limited sphere, it’s own inner contradictions and inability to validate and justify its own foundations and authority and it does not trouble me that the Gospel refuses to answer reason on its own terms.  Rather, the Gospel makes demands of reasons and calls it to obedience.

Unfortunately, it is that last quality that is lacking in me, and which forms the basis of my lament.  It is a frustrating mystery to me how it is that Bridegroom Matins can so move me to tears that my wife asks me if anything is wrong, yet I act out in anger to my innocent family members. I fail to pray.  I spend more time contemplating the Faith than I do living it.  It is not playacting, I do not think, as though I want to pretend to be someone or something I’m not.  Rather, it is, for lack of a better word, the laziness and immobility of sin and my sinful habits.

Would that my life in Christ were less theoria and more praxis!