The first time I heard the name “Moody Bible Institute,” I wondered
what it was all about, with a name like that.
I’m not picking on the Chicago-based institute. It’s a fine
institution. But as fascinated as I am with words, and their sounds and
meanings, I can remember the first time I heard someone refer to it, and I
thought it was a place for people with personality issues. So I asked, and was
told it was named for Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899), one of the great evangelists
of the 19th century.
Moody sounds like a 19th century name, something out of
Dickens, or perhaps Mark Twain. It’s
also a word that applies to all of us, in that it is part of the human
condition that we are often moody. We have moods, and when we say someone is
moody, we usually do not mean it as a compliment, unless, of course, it's my wife talking about me being moody. Fortunately, moods change,
and a bad mood usually gives way to a good mood.
Moods (and emotions), as innate a part of the human personality as they
are, are no basis for making major decisions. Yet we do it all the time, even
in matters of faith. (At the risk of a barb or two being flung, I would suggest
– only suggest, not state categorically – that joining a church only because
you like the pastor’s sermons is more a decision based on a mood rather than
reason. Pastors change; they retire or are called by another church.)
“Now Faith,” writes C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, “in the sense I am
here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once
accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view
your reason takes.”
And, we might add, circumstances change, too.
If our faith is true, it survives moods and circumstances.
What I particularly responded to in that statement by Lewis was him
calling faith an art, the art of “holding on to things your reason once
accepted.” The word “art” suggests creativity and imagination, and more than
that, it suggests individuality.
St. Paul said we each have different gifts, according to the grace
given us (Romans 12:6). How we come to faith, that art, is as different as we
are different. And how we display that faith, how it plays out in our lives,
through all the changing moods and circumstances, is like how we each paint a
picture, or write a poem, or carve a piece of wood, or write and sing a piece
of music.
Faith is not a mood, nor does it depend upon everything going right in
our lives. It is an art, specific to each of us, sharing the great themes and
ideas of Christianity between and among us but written out in our own
particular, individual style called a life.
Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing Mere
Christianity by C.S. Lewis. To see more posts on this chapter about faith,
please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.
