Control v. Faith

Growing up in an evangelistic-style church, I came away believing that faith meant two things:

1. Believing in God
2. Following (and enforcing) a set of rules

That was so much of what was preached: God says do this, God says don’t do that. And I really wanted to be a good and faithful Christian, so most of my childhood involved telling other people they were wrong and telling myself that I was wrong. As you might imagine, this led to a lot of strained relationships and intense perfectionism issues.

What I failed to see at the time was that this version of faith was so alluring because it promised control in a world that often feels like it’s out of control. I had control over my destiny (of heaven or hell, but also of succeeding or failing) if I could just be good enough and follow the rules. I had control over the destiny of others, too, if I could just get them to follow the same rules.

And of course, the church had control over me because they set the rules and I didn’t feel like I could question them. The rules “came from God.” It felt sacrilegious to even consider questioning them when the fate of my soul was at stake.

This is, of course, how systems of oppression and authoritarianism work. There is a right way and a wrong way, and anyone who falls outside of the right way will be punished. We’re seeing that a lot these days, especially as people who hold power or privilege cling to the idea that if they are “good” and follow the rules then they will win (even if that means that everyone else loses).

What they fail to see, though, is that everyone and everything is interconnected. The Medicaid situation is a good example. Some people assume only only the people who lose their insurance will be affected by these cuts. But in reality, the money that Medicaid would have paid for the people who are getting cut will be passed on to people who have insurance. Those “following the rules” will be impacted in other ways too: rural hospitals will close, hospital staff will be cut to bare minimum, people who work the newly instituted 80 hours a month to qualify for Medicaid could exceed income limits to qualify. What affects one person actually has a ripple effect on the entire community. If people opened their eyes to this, they might realize that supporting and protecting everyone in our society, even the people who “don’t deserve it,” is the best way to support and protect themselves.

But that would require giving up a degree of control. Allowing other people to do things their way, even if we disagree with it. Not forcing a specific outcome because it makes us feel better about ourselves or gives our egos a boost.

And ironically, that is what real faith is.

Faith is recognizing there’s a Source that’s bigger than us that can see the entire chess board (rather than just the tiny sliver we can see) and letting that Source suggest the direction you take because you know that suggestion will lead to a better outcome. Faith is trusting that other people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing and receiving their own directions that may or may not have anything to do with you, and that’s okay. Faith is recognizing that everyone is their own piece of the puzzle, and if we let everyone contribute in the way they’re meant to contribute, we have a complete and unified puzzle.

Unfortunately, we have a long way to go before we get to that place because it’s not a fun journey to get there. It requires a lot of ego death.

Personally, I love being right. It’s still hard not to feel ashamed when I turn out to be wrong. It’s so much easier to just be right for the sake of being right. I love feeling in control. I continually find myself in a pattern of gripping onto rules and situations I know don’t serve me or anyone else. When I wake up enough to realize it, I have to go through the painful process of surrendering control yet again and quieting the fear that I’m about to lose everything.

And I might. That’s the thing about faith—you don’t know where it’s going to take you next. It’s a long-term game, and the short term might be amazing, it might suck, it might be anywhere in between.

But that’s also true if we cling to control. We can serve at the alter of money and power for decades and have everything stripped away in an instant. There could be someone with more money and power than you who takes control of your actions, or there could be a health issue or a natural disaster that doesn’t care that you have millions of dollars. You are never truly fully in control. It’s all an illusion.

That’s the biggest difference between the two: control promises success and power even though it can’t guarantee it, while faith doesn’t promise anything other than that you won’t be alone on your journey, through good times and bad.

I think that’s why it’s hard to follow faith in its true form (and many people opt for the controlling version instead). We want the guarantee of security: that if something goes wrong, we can buy a fix and suffer as little as possible. Faith asks us to recognize that everything we have has been given to us and can be taken away. That’s a really uncomfortable feeling, but it’s honest.

And in this horrific time when our government is turning more and more authoritarian every day, we have a choice to try to force and control as much as the other side or to surrender to a higher power. To be clear, I’m not saying just sit around, do nothing, and hope that everything turns out for the best. Faith is not “thoughts and prayers.” What I’m saying is that if we show up and take Source-directed action and things don’t go our way, that doesn’t mean we’ve done the wrong thing or that there isn’t a bigger game playing out around us whose strategy we can’t see. It also means allowing people who voted for this government to grieve when something terrible happens rather than rubbing the destruction in their faces, then helping them understand why the ego death of recognizing they were wrong and choosing a better way is worth it. And it means recognizing where we are clinging onto things that give us a sense of control but are actually distractions for work that we’re being called to that scares us or doesn’t make sense, but is ultimately more impactful.

That’s what I cling to these days. That even though I can’t see a way out of this mess, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a higher power looking at the chessboard giving directions that will lead to a more powerful and meaningful win than I could ever imagine. My job is simply to listen for that direction and try to surrender to it as much as possible.