The “sermonette” portion of my visit with this student was mercifully over. I sat back and waited for him to burst into tears and tell me his life was forever changed by the poignancy of my presentation. His response was less than I was hoping for.

“I’ve heard all that before. You don’t understand, Les, I know the information. It’s getting that information to mean something to me, to really grip me. I guess I just don’t have any faith.”

This conversation has repeated itself with countless students over the last decade, to the end that I am realizing that there is an epidemic of misunderstanding the nature and marks of true Biblical faith. In almost every conversation I get to have with evangelicalized students, faith is almost always conceived as a new work, a re-directed effort, or a renewed expulsion of doubt.

For instance, I recently asked a group of students about the nature of Jesus’ miracles. Why weren’t they more spectacular? If I were going to think up a miracle to wow my congregation into belief in me, I would have more pyrotechnics, more drama, perhaps some flying around a bit. But Jesus seems content in the Gospels to heal and feed the sick and poor. To put it more crudely (quoting yet another student visit), “If Jesus wants us to believe in him so badly, then why doesn’t he make himself more obvious?”

Almost without fail, the answer comes back that if God made it that obvious, then we wouldn’t need to demonstrate any “faith.” Faith, so conceived, is the volitional leap into the dark; the more absurd, the better.

The problem with all this discussion however is that it misses the essential nature of faith. Jesus says that “not even in Israel have I found such faith” to a centurion, who, only verses before, confesses, “…I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.” (Luke 7:1-10) Faith, I am suggesting, is the soul’s response to the uncovering of its emptiness.  And the problem with every misconception of faith is that it still ends up being about ME, and not Jesus.

New believers often quickly despair when they begin to think about what they have just done in signing on with Jesus. “Was I sincere enough?” they think. “Did I repent properly?” they wonder. “Do I have faith?” they ask. The simple answer to these kinds of questions ought to be, “Absolutely not.”

But isn’t that the point?  Truthfully, these questions reveal a stubborn self-righteousness that sincerely wants to contribute something to this transaction of salvation: my sincerity, my heart-felt repentance, my faith. When our coming to Christ ought to be the abandonment of these things for wholehearted focus on Jesus and his merits on my behalf.

Consider this: why would Jesus have his followers to stop eating periodically as a source of spiritual discipline? “How strange,” thinks the outsider. And it is strange. But what if hunger is the nearest physical analog to the spiritual sensation of faith? Faith, then, is the realization of my spiritual hunger and the consequent feeding upon Christ.