"Math always works...but you have to do it right."
I am a man of faith. Faith in God. Faith in math. 8+5=13 always. If this isn't true, everything from music to space travel is undone. God loves us and wants us to know him. If this is not true, life is undone
I say I have faith in math, It doesn't sound like faith. It sounds like fact. But whenever I use my ATM card to take $80 out of my bank account, knowing that there is $100 in the bank, I use faith. Fact doesn't happen until the bank does what banks do and now I have a $20 balance. People don't think of this as faith, but it is. If I didn't have faith in the math, I couldn't withdraw $80 until after I see the $20 balance (which makes no sense because at that point I could not withdraw $80). Life without faith makes no sense at all.
Error doesn't come from a lack of faith in math. Error comes from doing math poorly. If my math tells me that I can withdraw $120 from my account with a balance of $100, I need to learn to do math better. Math has not failed. I have failed to do the math.
The same concept holds for biblical faith. How many times has someone lost her faith because she didn't do the biblical math properly? Believing God because of a half sentence someplace in the bible taken out of context and applied to a random situation is always erroneous, and generaly leads to failure. Believing in God's character, his motives and his ability is much less prone to error, and leads to a much happier, more fulfilling, more abundant life.
The more complex the math, the more opportunity for error. God's promises are all interrelated, almost always conditional, subject to his sovereignty and fall under a system of priority. The math can get complex, but that shouldn't cause us to lose faith or trust him less. It should motivate us to know the math better; to study his word, character, motivation and priority more.
As a gay Christian, I really had to work hard on the math. Straight people don't face this challenge. There are several easy answers that work well for them concerning homosexuality. They just don't work for me. Over the next few posts, I want to try to lay out the math I used to find my way through the presumed mutual exclusivity of a gay Christian.
Maybe I am not the oxymoron my previous pastor (who ran off with the choir director, destroyed his church and now works at a liquor store) told me I am.