Many of us maybe have heard that we're supposed to "put" God at the center of everything, consider God<em> first</em>, or something along those lines.  I think this might betray something about how we tend to conceive of God. What I've noticed  is that there seems to be - very generally speaking - at least two kinds of faith that are being practiced in the Christian context:

first, there's the faith that takes this teaching quite literally and attempts to see God in everything with the best of intentions.  The consequence here though sometimes amounts to a kind of <em>supernatural-ism</em>, in which God is understood to be playing an orchestration game in all areas of life, and is thought of as related to us only <em>externally</em>.  In other words, God becomes the cause of everything good that happens to us (and actually I would say there's still a sense in which I want to affirm this), but from <em>outside</em> and<em> above</em>.  And obviously there are those who take this a step further and grant that God is the cause of the bad things as well - even if only in an indirect way.  But this is not the view I'm concerned about at the moment either.

The other kind of faith - one that I'm trying to embody more in my own life - might go something like this:

"While personal concern is sustained by a continuously growing faith in the value and meaning of life, the deepest motivation [going into] the future is hope.  For hope makes it possible to look beyond the fulfillment of urgent wishes and pressing desires and offers a vision beyond human suffering and even death. <strong>[The Christian life] therefore is not called "Christian" because it is permeated with optimism against all the odds of life</strong>, <strong>but because it is grounded in the historic Christ-event which is understood as a definitive breach in the deterministic chain of human trial and error</strong>, and as a dramatic affirmation that there is light on the other side of darkness." - from <em>The Wounded Healer</em> by Henri Nouwen

I do not see this as the easy solution or as the only clear alternative necessarily, but I think the juxtaposition of these two approaches can be helpful - especially with respect to reducing anxiety and simplifying, at least <em>conceptually,</em> the path of discipleship that is otherwise very difficult to lead.  Why?  Because on the one hand, God is still being <em>trusted</em> as the one who empowers and persuades where human striving has been exhausted, but on the other hand is not trusted in such a way that distracts us with personalistic ideas of God's will - a way of faith that sounds synonymous with Western exceptionalism.  We want so bad for our lives to matter and for there to be meaning or calling in our vocations.  And I believe that there is.  The problems comes when we cross the fine line that separates this genuine human desire from egoism and idolatry that waits on the other with naive and individualist Western exceptionalism.

In case we think, however, that this is an excuse to wait around for God in mere contemplative inaction, Nouwen elsewhere declares the following:

“You are Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you emphasize the need of conversion both for yourself and for the world, so long as you in no way let yourself become established in the situation of the world, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. You are Christian only when you believe you have a role to play in the realization of the new kingdom, and when you urge everyone you meet with holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life.”

This presents a challenge to those in the ministry for instance who make it their first priority to preserve and grow specific institutions or to please their constituencies.  It is likewise a charge against those who'd like to serve their own ends   while giving only occasional credence to "what really matters."  Rather we must somehow learn to order our lives in such a way as to be at once full of hope for the coming of God and yet faithful to the everyday mission of reconciliation.

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