by Jacob Ninan
Faith is one of the most crucial elements of our spiritual life, because it is through faith that we get to know God and also to experience the salvation He has prepared for us. So it natural that Satan takes pains to counterfeit faith among people so that they will miss out on the real faith. It is distressing to witness the results of false faith, meaning faith in something or someone other than God, and also those of imagined faith in God which is faith people claim to have in God but which they themselves have made up. It is not difficult for those who know God and His word personally to recognise false faith as defined above. But it may become very difficult to identify an imagined faith, because it appears to be in God Himself and also based on His word. People who have this faith appear to use the same language as true believers, but the irony is that there is no truth in this faith. These people are only deceiving themselves thinking that what they have is genuine.Are we truly born of God?
At the most basic level, a person with an imagined faith assumes that he is a child of God headed for heaven, when the truth is that he is still a child of the devil and not yet born again (John.8:44;1John.3:10). The first verse refers to some Jews who imagined that they were children of Abraham (and thus also of God) because they belonged to his family. Aren’t there many now who imagine that they are headed for heaven just because they belong to a Christian family and are members of a church? The second verse talks of differences in practical lives where true children of God are characterised by their righteousness and children of the devil by their lack of it. The word of God goes on to point out that if one hates his brother he is deceiving himself if he thinks he loves God (1John.3:15). There are many more such ways in which we can see how different a child of God is different from a child of the devil is. When we remember that Jesus called all people who are not born again and have not become children of God as children of the devil, we understand that this is a very crucial distinction between true faith and imagined faith, because the implication is heaven or hell for us.
How is it that we imagine ourselves to have true saving faith when we don’t have one? Perhaps we have not heard the good news of salvation through Jesus and we are just going along with our church with its rituals and ceremonies, assuming that this is all there is to religion. Perhaps we have only heard the gospel partially where we know the story of Jesus and understood that we need to ‘accept’ Him into our hearts in order to go to heaven. We may not have experienced any work of the Holy Spirit convicting us in our heart of sin, and we may never have repented from sin and turned to Jesus as our Saviour. We would have thought that we have repeated the prayer that the preacher suggested and that everything is fine. But if we find practically no change inside our heart, mind and behaviour and there is no genuine gratitude in our heart towards Jesus who came and found us who were once lost, the chances are that we are just following the new pattern of church meetings, Bible reading and prayer, and fooling ourselves.
Faith for special favours from God
Many people claim to have faith for receiving special favours from God, in terms of ministry or personal life. They usually quote Bible verses to confirm what God has promised, but some also claim to have heard directly from God about something He has promised to do for them. After some time, when things are examined from hindsight it becomes clear that many cases of such faith were not real. They had imagined that they had faith. But examining things from hindsight is too late in most cases because damage has already been done, testimony has been ruined and the instead of glorifying God as they expected, others have begun to mock them. Can we know beforehand if our faith is genuine?
It would be difficult to give any test that can categorically determine if our faith is real or imagined, because faith is essentially a subjective matter. If a man claims to have faith, it would be very difficult for another man to deny that or even to decide for himself that what the other man has is an imagined faith. But let us try to understand some general principles that can help us as well as for us to help others.
Why do we get into imagined faith?
1. Imitation. Our herd instinct tells to become a part of the group. This does not stop at the teenage years where we succumb to peer pressure to find acceptance by the gang. Even in the church we do not like to stand out as an odd one, and so we try to imitate the language and behaviour of the group. When Ananias and Sapphira saw how many people sold off their entire properties and gave the proceeds to the church, they felt they could not afford to be left out. They did not have the faith that the others had, and so they imitated the external actions up to a point. The consequences were much more serious than they imagined. What we need to see in our context is how this couple was driven by a desire to be counted by the others on the same level.
2. Seeking to be great. The desire to show ourselves to be great, in our own eyes in order to boost our self-esteem or in front of others to show off, is the pride of life that we are warned about (1John.2:16). Satan tries to fan up this desire, by speaking to us about how great we are or what great ministries we can do for God, and pushes us forward beyond God’s calling or gifts for our life. He also uses many people to tell us what a special calling we have from God. Once we bite this bait it is very hard to deliver ourselves from his hook, because our whole vision gets clouded and we become closed to counsel or correction.
3. Unrealistic thoughts about ourselves. We all may face temptations sometime or the other to make ourselves great. But once we fall for it and imagine ourselves to be great or someone special, our progress can be fast on the way of destruction. We prop ourselves up with different types of imagined faith, and close ourselves to reality.
4. Envy. When we are young in the Lord there may be some great men of God whom we greatly admire. We think that to be spiritual is to do what they have done. We try to be like our heroes not trying to find out if our calling is the same or not. If we realise that we are not able to get the same success, we may try to take on some form of imagined faith to show everyone that we are just as good as our heroes or better.
The consequences of imagined faith
Since imagined faith is something we have assumed for ourselves and not something that God has given us, we can be sure that we will not have God’s grace to support us as we try to exercise our faith. As a result we can go deeper and deeper into the quicksand of deceiving ourselves. Fortunately this does not go into extremes in most cases, and people tend to understand their mistake once their faith does not work. But there is a tendency to persist with the self-deception, and deceiving spirits can take us along further, and the consequences can be extremely tragic, pathetic and painful for everyone concerned.
Imagined faith makes us feel good about ourselves. We feel that we can do things that ordinary people cannot, and we imagine how the others will recognise our greatness once our faith shows its results. But then when well meaning people come and question us about the validity of our faith and warn us about possible consequences we get into a dilemma. Since we believe that our faith is from God we are scared of going against it. At the same time we do not know how to convince our friends against their fears. So what we may do under such circumstances may be two fold. We will begin to consider that all who oppose us from doing the will of God, as we perceive it, must be from the devil or at least ignorant of the spiritual facts of the matter. Secondly we begin to deny the reality of things that are contrary to what we believe. We keep confessing what we believe as being true, and denying and renouncing every fact which is contrary.
Take the example of a man who believes that God is going to heal him supernaturally without any medical treatment. He quotes verses such as “By His stripes we are healed” without thinking whether he can afford to take such general verses to apply specifically to his sickness without having received from God any specific authority to do so. He needs to think that this is a general statement which can mean different things including spiritual healing, and remember that not all believers get healed in any case. Even those who do get healed do not always get healed supernaturally. If one has to apply this to a particular situation, one needs to have a special authority from God to do so. But if this man now convinces himself that God is going to heal him, he may even tell himself that what God is going to do is as good as done. So what about the symptoms of the sickness that are still evident? He thinks that they are all lies from the devil. He comforts (actually deceives) himself saying that what is seen is passing away and what is not seen (healing) is what is real (2Cor.4:18). Now he begins to deny and renounce all references to his sickness and his symptoms, and keep away from all people who will bring in spirits of unbelief, doubt or fear! He refuses all forms of treatment and even proclaims that he is already healed, thinking that such ‘positive confession’ can make his faith real.
This is a very dangerous position to be in. In this way we insulate ourselves from reality and any possibility of God Himself warning us or using other people to do so. Of course, calamity will follow. And then, whatever dreams we have had about how we would be shining as a remarkable instrument in the hands of God to impress and convince unbelieving people about God’s power and glory get shattered, and unbelievers begin to mock us and God. Chances are that even if we survive, we and others who were with us in this deception might feel disappointed with God for having failed us, and finally whatever faith we had in God may also get lost. We do not realise that God has not failed us at all, but it was entirely folly on our part that we went along on this self-deceiving path.
Detecting imagined faith in others
Even though it is extremely difficult for the man who has deceived himself through imagined faith to see his mistake, sometimes it can be difficult for the other people also to judge whether this is a case of true faith or imagined faith. This is because we know God can do all things and there is nothing impossible with God, and because we do not know for sure if God has given this man some special faith for the particular situation. As a result we may be scared to make a judgment that might find ourselves opposing God! So many of us might take the position of watching and waiting with prayer, and perhaps giving some mild expression of doubt, without seriously trying to stop this man from going ahead. But there are some indicators that can help us to recognise imagined faith in most cases.
A genuine faith does not exist together with a carnal person. When an otherwise worldly person suddenly claims to have great faith for miracles, his faith cannot be relied on. This is also true about an immature believer who claims calls to great ministries. Those who are young in the Lord may be sincere, zealous and well meaning, but we need to pass their faith through extra fine filters before we go along with them (1Tim.3:6).
One of the most common characteristics about a man with an imagined faith is a sense of arrogance, because he has great thoughts about himself. He is not willing to listen to others who disagree with him or question his reasoning. On the other hand he behaves as if he is an authority on the subject with no need to learn from others. His interpretation of Bible verses seems to be weird, with special meanings placed into otherwise innocent verses. In seeking to deny the existence of what he considers to be ‘negative’ aspects of reality he resorts to blatant lies or twists his speech trying to convey different meanings. It is good to check what he says with others who know him and the situation to find out whether he is departing from the truth.
Those who are not yet fully into the deception yet may also show desperation to hold on to their faith and a fear to discuss it. But even behind the confident words and outward behaviour of a thoroughly deceived person, we can detect that there is something wrong in their spirit. This is inconsistent with what they profess or make themselves out to be.
The final lesson
It is a very dangerous situation if we begin to think that we are someone special with a calling others cannot understand. Such thoughts should immediately raise red flags in our mind. Logically it is true that God may call people with special tasks, and that when that happens others may not understand them. But usually when people get such calls from God they feel totally inadequate in themselves, and need a lot of convincing from God. On the other hand since imagined faith involves people who are longing to be great there is no caution from their side and no eagerness to confirm what they think of as having come from God. In genuine cases of special callings, there is also a sense of humility that would cause people to consult with mature believers to try and understand God’s ways better. There is safety in a multitude of counsellors (Prov.15:22).
While a few people may be trying to deceive us deliberately, in most cases they are deceived, and to be pitied. Our task there is to help them to come out of such deception and to protect them from worse harm.
-- Published in the Light of Life magazine, December 2008