It’s not what you do, nor what you think or know, but to what you are committed.
That is a reasonable translation of the title of this post, which is also the title of an old hymn. Most Westerners miss the symbolism completely. Overcoming the world is not an image of conquest of all the things outside you, but breaking its grip on you. Christ set the pattern by His willing sacrifice. He was able to leave this world behind by refusing the frantic instinct for survival. If you can simply teach yourself to act without considering that human fear of suffering and death, then you have overcome the world.
But we have larded the word “faith” with too much mythology. Faith is a synonym for commitment. It implies a level of commitment that makes your own cross an element of the joy of communion with the Holy Spirit. You take it for granted that your flesh will suffer and you don’t get worked up about it. It’s not as if you have to bear some stern visage like a fanatic; that’s a Western image that is foreign to Scripture. You do whatever it takes to keep your flesh in line with your commitment. Having your own personal expression of human feeling is not a failure.
The failure is refusing to follow.
Failure is not having the wrong theology. Failure is not having the wrong actions. Both of those are entirely foreign to Scripture. Law is not faith, but law can lead to faith. What makes any action wrong cannot be judged by objective reason; it can just barely be measured by quantum moral reasoning. What makes an action wrong is lack of commitment. Whether your flesh likes it or doesn’t like it is not a standard or measure. Do you imagine your flesh is all one thing? You’ll have multiple conflicting desires thrumming through the nerves of your body and ticking over in your brain. Your own mind will host a cacophony of demands impossible to satisfy. That’s our fallen human nature at its finest. You must set all of that aside and let the Spirit-spirit communion evaluate and decide what’s best.
Nor should you expect a clear and concise answer on which to act in every context. There may well be a hundred choices viable and safe under faith. And you will surely consider the consequences of each, but in the end, what matters is what matters to your calling. Not what matters to your flesh, as if you could resolve that mess, but what matters on a different plane of existence, in Heaven. It’s quantum reasoning, a wholly different approach where things on this plane can be multiple conflicting things at once, because this level doesn’t really matter.
Faith is commitment to another world beyond this entire universe. Everything else is just a reflection of that glory or a cloaking of it.
