Ethics: “Doing the Faith”

Belief and Behavior

When a person’s behavior is not consistent with his or her beliefs, or when they find day after day that their beliefs have no connection with the life they live, they lose that sense of purpose and integration essential to a healthy person. Christians are convinced that their lives should exhibit a distinctive quality of behavior. They view the Christian life as a unique way of thinking, speaking, and relating to other people. They are not content to accept the Christian faith solely as a particular system of beliefs. Believers hold the conviction that Christian life has to do with the way a person speaks and acts, his relationships with others, his attitude towards his work, his choices of recreation, his participation in political, economic and social activities; in short, with every aspect of his behavior in the world.

In the Book of Acts, the company of those who responded to God’s call were identified clearly as men and women who held to a particular belief and way of life. Belief and behavior were brought together in discipleship as Christians remembered the words of Jesus: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) The temptation for Christians, now as then, is to think that they have the way figured out. It is only through coming to the Lord we find our way. Only through the Lord Jesus Christ are we led to a knowledge and understanding of God in the midst of the present, day-to-day life. Coming to Him brings us to the God who is present in our midst, rather than secluded in some distant abode. Whenever a person hears and responds to God’s call to live in Christ, he finds belief and behavior coming into a unified and integrated whole Christian discipline as a way of relating to all men and to all situations of life. After looking at the dynamics of spiritual gifts and their place in the body of Christ (1st Corinthians 12), Paul wrote to the Corinthians that he would show them “a still more excellent way” (verse 31), and then we get to 1st Corinthians 13 and a discourse on the qualities of love.

To speak to Christianity as a particular way of life leads us to a study of the motivations and forms of human behavior and, therefore, into the central problems of ethics; that is, how should a person act and why should he give thought to the rightness or wrongness of his acts? This is why I believe belief and behavior are integrally related, and that faith and ethics cannot be separated in the Christian life. We see much criticism voiced towards the phoniness of many Christians. We all know people who say they believe one thing but behave in ways that completely deny those beliefs, or they hold beliefs which the young think have no importance or significance for the here and now, for the problems of sex, war, racial exploitations, or other issues. When belief and behavior are separated, life seems to become hypocritical.

As Americans we suffer from a separation between long-held, conventional beliefs and the ways of behaving traditionally associated with those beliefs. We confess to certain beliefs in our Bill of Rights, our Constitution, our historic documents, but we deny these beliefs in many of our public decisions. America is an unusually idealistic country. This nation was birthed in a period of religious optimism and confidence in the capacity of men to rule themselves. At the same time, the influences of Puritanism were strong. Its effect was to plant deeply within the nation’s consciousness the sense that the total society should conform to a way of righteousness that comes from obedience to a holy God.

Should the Lord tarry, we will take a look at several aspects of “Doing the Faith”, looking at belief and behavior and how these ethical conflicts confront us. Sadly, as Christians and Americans we find our beliefs have little to say about how we live our present life. When we think in moral terms about our nation’s responsibilities, we soon come to face the reality of the power of politics in world affairs. Should we then righteously justify everything this nation does with our economic and military might? Some-thing to consider.

Next we will look at Faith and Works as they pertain to “Doing the Faith” because these are things we live with daily, act upon regularly, and need to have in clear perspective so that we can be those “peculiar” people (Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 2:9) ready to give the hope that the world is so desperately seeking! "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear" (1 Peter 3:15).

In His Service,
Pastor Ben