Sink or Swim?

Many, many years ago I heard one of my scoutmasters tell us that he taught his sons to swim by taking them to the end of a fishing dock and throwing them in the deep water (really!). He was kind of proud of this, but I remember wondering if he was very "safe"! I didn't really feel like he was someone I could trust. How about you?

Is trust developed by putting people into frightening situations? In other words, if I wanted my sons to learn to trust me, would I do that by placing them into a situation that would scare them to death? Wouldn't it be more likely that if I wanted my sons to trust me that I would be kind and gentle and generous, rescuing them when necessary from that which was harmful to them and also teaching them how to face tough things maturely (not by "sink or swim" but by getting into the water with them)? It seems to me that trust grows when someone is good to us, not when they deliberately set us up for hard things.

What's my point with this? Just that I realized today that I sometimes tend to think of God as putting me into situations in order to make me have faith, instead of to reveal His kindness and power. After all, since He "allowed" this hard thing, He must be expecting me to grow in faith through it. The problem with this kind of thinking, though, is that it makes me less likely to trust God or to want to get close to Him! The other problem is that such thinking is simply not biblical. Scripture does tell us that trouble, trials and tribulation will come, but my Bible tells me that this is so that my faith can be tested and/or revealed 1 Peter 1:6-7). Yes, sometimes this testing takes us beyond where we think we can go, but this is to reveal that God can be relied on, not to force us to rely on Him with a faith that isn't there (2 Corinthians 1:8-11). Rather the faith that is in us because of God's faithfulness revealed to us over and over in the past rises up and surprises us with its presence! Note that this is not true for people who think faith is a feeling. Faith is not a feeling--fear is a feeling--faith is a settled decision to trust, even in the dark, not blindly but boldly because we know who God is.

Anyway, just thinking more about faith and wondering if I am making sense! It just seems to me that if I am to grow in my trust of someone (God or anyone) then what grows my trust best is a revelation of that person's goodness, love and trustworthiness, not my having to trust them because I have no other choice. But I could be wrong, I guess. What do you think?

Finally, in something totally unrelated to this topic, but very related to the Simple Church world, I want to recommend a great "Simple Church" article by my friend, Scott Linklater, which you can view by clicking here. It's called "Detoxing: Unwinding Ourselves and the Church." Take a peek and see what you think.

Discovering trust in the dark places from the One who is there with me,

Tom, one of Abba's children