2 Timothy 1:5 – A Living, Individualized Faith
3 I thank God, whom I serve with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day, 4 greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy, 5 when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.
"The hardest war to fight," insists Switchfoot in "Against the Voices "is the fight to be yourself."
I call that vigor to mind when I consider Paul's verb describing faith in 2 Timothy 1:5. I suspect that if we were to animate faith with verbs, they would be somewhat defensive, impersonal verbs like proclaim, conform to, and pass on uncorrupted.
The faith Paul recalls as coursing through Timothy's family line is not a brand, a banner, or a badge. When Paul describes faith here, he describes it as dwelling in succeeding generations. Paul seems to experience a sense of visceral vitality that has not dimmed in whatever time has elapsed since he had contact with the faith of Timothy's family.
Perhaps this sense of intimacy as he, to use James MacDonald's phrase, felt the heat of their love for Christ allowed Paul to declare Timothy's faith genuine even as he may have been recalling Timothy's tears shed in a moment of less than robust belief. No one with biblical understanding would claim that faith is inherited. But perhaps as each generation treasures it while it is called today, its impact is proven and compounded.
Is our faith a dwelling faith? Does it abide with us in daily life the way James and John as Christ's original disciples resolutely clung to Him in the specific place they chose to be? Is our notion of faith fungible and adaptable enough to note it in the lives as different as, Paul says, Timothy's mother and grandmother in different generations, and, even, back as far as Abraham?
Or do the verbs and adjectives that stick to our notion of faith age poorly, revered but not close by in daily life like a fragile family heirloom no one quite knows what to do with, but no one wants to throw away? As we look back on three or a dozen generations of faith, do we picture Christ, the One in Whom genuine faith is rooted, helping our forefathers, our grandparents, and our parents through issues very similar to the ones we face today?
Without such a refocus, it's amazing how easily we fall for Screwtape's surface switcheroo, seeing the principles of the Christian walk as inapplicable across generations because they tend to dress differently and talk differently from one to the next. The modesty and disciplined verbiage of the Greatest Generation, for instance, can momentarily distract us from the reality that they, moment by moment, chose between fear and faith in the same way that their more expressive tie-dyed successors would do.
Faith dwelt at Pearl Harbor. Faith dwelt at Woodstock. Faith dwelt, and dwells, in Silicon Valley and permeates from its output as readily as does an alternative to Christ-centered faith. Ours, individually and in communities buffeted by and declarative of constant change is to live out faith in ways relevant to the idiom and choices around us.
"The hardest war to fight," insists Switchfoot in "Against the Voices "is the fight to be yourself."
I call that vigor to mind when I consider Paul's verb describing faith in 2 Timothy 1:5. I suspect that if we were to animate faith with verbs, they would be somewhat defensive, impersonal verbs like proclaim, conform to, and pass on uncorrupted.
The faith Paul recalls as coursing through Timothy's family line is not a brand, a banner, or a badge. When Paul describes faith here, he describes it as dwelling in succeeding generations. Paul seems to experience a sense of visceral vitality that has not dimmed in whatever time has elapsed since he had contact with the faith of Timothy's family.
Perhaps this sense of intimacy as he, to use James MacDonald's phrase, felt the heat of their love for Christ allowed Paul to declare Timothy's faith genuine even as he may have been recalling Timothy's tears shed in a moment of less than robust belief. No one with biblical understanding would claim that faith is inherited. But perhaps as each generation treasures it while it is called today, its impact is proven and compounded.
Is our faith a dwelling faith? Does it abide with us in daily life the way James and John as Christ's original disciples resolutely clung to Him in the specific place they chose to be? Is our notion of faith fungible and adaptable enough to note it in the lives as different as, Paul says, Timothy's mother and grandmother in different generations, and, even, back as far as Abraham?
Or do the verbs and adjectives that stick to our notion of faith age poorly, revered but not close by in daily life like a fragile family heirloom no one quite knows what to do with, but no one wants to throw away? As we look back on three or a dozen generations of faith, do we picture Christ, the One in Whom genuine faith is rooted, helping our forefathers, our grandparents, and our parents through issues very similar to the ones we face today?
Without such a refocus, it's amazing how easily we fall for Screwtape's surface switcheroo, seeing the principles of the Christian walk as inapplicable across generations because they tend to dress differently and talk differently from one to the next. The modesty and disciplined verbiage of the Greatest Generation, for instance, can momentarily distract us from the reality that they, moment by moment, chose between fear and faith in the same way that their more expressive tie-dyed successors would do.
Faith dwelt at Pearl Harbor. Faith dwelt at Woodstock. Faith dwelt, and dwells, in Silicon Valley and permeates from its output as readily as does an alternative to Christ-centered faith. Ours, individually and in communities buffeted by and declarative of constant change is to live out faith in ways relevant to the idiom and choices around us.
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