This Page needs to be read in tandem with the date for freshman and sophomore readers, so to find a mind set for what may seem like an ephemeral context for life. We are interested here with confidence. We see a great deal of braggadocio, gesturing, anger, feigned knowledge leading to stern criticism of those who are trying to do something to improve matters, but often stumbling, Who are our confidence leaders? Christians want to credit Christ in relationship with the Holy Spirit, in that no one has shown up in the intervening centuries to match them. God began from a perception that man (Adam, male and female – Genesis 1:27) was made primary in the earthly context. First things are not science and education, nations and world priorities, or some things other, but individual (singular) persons. God’s first objective was, and remains, the individual. He or she is helped in family, in right (righteous) organization (social) called government, and in other institutions that advance the causes of the human individual, who, when rightly oriented is concerned for all. Carried through, that perception would make a magnificent society related to angelical perceptions. We need confidence to bring that off, and confidence that bringing it off will give us the life that is meaningful for all persons, free from the laws of the jungle. We fumble with it.
In this Spiritual/civil perception, Jesus came. He did not emerge in the temples, or in the royal courts, or in the intellectual world of the scholars, or as a mogul in business, but as the son of a carpenter and a peasant young woman. Likely, neither of the parents could read. The word identifying Joseph’s profession was that of a rough carpenter, not a finisher. He built fences and put up the house studs. Others finished the work. Nothing in them was remarkable, except their faith, fully fleshed out in their thoughts and lives. They were remarkable in their faith. That faith gave them meaning that would prevail for their individual and corporate lives. They emerged as faithful persons, to be models to others. Jesus was an obedient son in the family, but left home and family to choose disciples. They were ordinary men, but also to be noted as workers. They labored at what they had been taught, and what came naturally. Jesus did not choose persons who would specialize in some group so to give privilege. He took persons from the mass, the ordinary citizenry on whom the powers leaned for the support of their positions. He was able in a thousand days to make leaders of them. They are remembered many centuries later when the power brokers are either nearly forgotten or remembered to be found faulty for their appetites, and cruelties – large and small.
God’s interest in mankind is an interest in the individual person, right where he or she is. God can, as he did with the holy family, and so many others we know about from Abraham to the present, make them the children of God. That is the important thing – that each one becomes the child of God. To make it clear he informs us that we have been adopted, which means chosen or accepted. Adopted in the beloved is a confidence maker. Christians ought not to be dragged along by the vicissitudes of the world around them, but in the glory of God, made practical in the daily life of faith, prayer, Scripture, the Holy Spirit, the fellowship of the Church, and the hope of life everlasting. Just try to beat that for confidence making.
It is clear from Scripture that we ought to walk in confidence. It is harnessed by humility, in some delay of the eternal Hope, in the need for service and maturity (growth) in the creative gesture of God’s original purpose. It is inspired from a belief in justification and immortality already held by the soul as though accomplished in the final description of success – as the Scripture redundantly reminds the faith person. The doubter, even the stern disbeliever, is faced with a real problem in that millions of persons over many centuries have embraced, lived by and carried through the faith described in Scripture. The issue becomes very strong that so many lived by repentance, faith, love and obedience to God’s revealed life formation and morality that denied self for seeking the character of God. How can so many do that, even to the point of martyrdom and self-protection with some sustaining reality? Christian faith is so great that God’s children created a world movement of missionary effort to share strong abiding faith. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020