Will He Find Faith on the Earth? (#930)
"When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” It's a disturbing aside Jesus makes at the end of a parable about perseverance and prayer. What do we make of it? Was this a real concern for Jesus, as in the days of Noah when there was only one man left on the planet who could find grace in God's eyes? Why wouldn't he already know? Was it just a rhetorical statement to provoke his disciples to learn the power of faith or is there a real risk that humanity will continue to to try and manipulate God for their own ends while falling into unfaithfulness? Those are intriguing questions, and Wayne probes them with Bob Prater, who had a nudge about this passage some weeks ago. At the end, Kyle joins the conversation as well.
Podcast Notes:
- Watch the video recording of this podcast
- Previous Podcast with Bob Prater that this conversation grew out of.
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Appreciate so much this ongoing conversation. I am enjoying the fruit as I learn along with you all. Sue
We are workers together with God. I suspect we presume that God will work with us versus our working with Him.
At the beginning of my Walk with Jesus in ’98, as a 40 year old, I soon learned that many “we take the Bible Seriously”, Christians, Seemed to not have any FAITH in the Kingdom teachings of Jesus. Many pastor/teachers would rush through “The Sermon on the Mount”, without comment, or when they did comment they would say things like; you can’t just love people, or God doesn’t expect you to be a doormat. This was a huge disappointment for me as I had already lived 40 years observing faithless secular behavior. Thus my bent was to become a lot like these pastors andvery little like Jesus. But even since those first years, I was drawn to the stories of laypeople who ended up loving their enemies. These examples are not lost on the non-believing world.
This last week I watched a video talk titled “Being Human” by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscience researcher who has extensively studied the social behavior of African baboons.
Towards the end of his talk he references quotes by Sister Helen Prejean, who had by the time of the video, spent several decades ministering to death row inmates. She is known to have espoused the 2 following convictions:
1. The less forgivable the Act, the more we have to find the means to forgive it.
2. The less loveable the person, the more we have to find the means to love them.
His comments about this were; “And as a strident Atheist this strikes me as the Nuttiest, most irrational, magnificent thing we are capable of as a species.”
I believe there is an increasing number of people demonstrating Faith in the Kingdom Jesus taught and modeled. But my perception might be a bit skewed as this is the only kind of Faith driven good news I really care about anymore.