"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" Isaiah 5:20

The average American church spends most their time every week focusing on one question: "How do I get more faith?" The Bible answers that in one verse:

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
-Romans 10:17

If you want to have more faith, then read the Word of God. That's it. Christians do not need a masters degree in philosophy to understand this concept.

So the real question we need to address is why do the mass majority of pastors and churches in modern day America waste so much of their time preaching on faith? It's because they can never be wrong. Faith does not take study or preperation, so preachers can preach on almost anything concerning faith and still be right. Talking about faith just gives Christians something to do for an hour on Sunday morning without offending anyone.

If a pastor preaches on Biblical history, prophecy, or any real doctrine of substance in the Bible, someone in the crowd is always going to be hurt or offended. It's unavoidable. So to keep up numbers, they avoid most of the contraversial topics and just preach fun-time anticdotes on faith, which is much less offensive.

Attending a few different churches as a child/teenager, I spent years trying to keep myself awake so I didn't get in trouble, listening to men behind the pulpit, and women in Bible studies, drone on and on about the difficulties of being faithful. Even after I was saved, I was sick of hearing it. The only place I was really learning much of anything was alone in my own study.

I have listened to pastors go into examples of men in the Bible who had faith, then they turn to the audience and say something like, "Just remember the choices Peter made the next time your lawn-mower breaks down." Preaching on faith requires little or no study whatsoever, and it offends no one because most of the sermons end with "self-reflection" on the individuals own life, which means instead of really studying the Word of God, Christians get to think about their favorite subject--themselves.


For example, instead of taking the hard road to talk about the pagan origins of Christmas, and how the Catholic church has corrupted modern Christianity despite the warnings Jesus Christ gave us about being deceived, it's much easier for a preacher just to open up the first chapter of Luke and preach the same thing he has for the past twenty years. He'll talk about the difficulties Mary faced, and how much faith she had, and what a miracle the birth of Jesus was, because after all, American Christians spend so much time trying to figure out how to get more faith, apparently they seem to be incapable of remembering how Christ was born, and they need to be reminded every single year at the same exact time.
(Read "Christmas: The Rejection of Jesus" here at creationliberty.com for more details.)

Here is an example of typical preaching on this issue. After quoting Jesus about faith as mustard seeds in Luke 17, this author wrote:
"That must have puzzled the apostles. They wanted big faith, but he spoke of the smallest thing they knew. Perhaps you’ve never seen a mustard seed. The people to whom Jesus spoke knew seeds very well. It was an agricultural society. Jesus spoke their farming language. Today, we are a high tech society, and our expressions are scientific. Today, Jesus would use our common speech. He spoke 2000 years ago about the mustard seed, a small thing with mighty potency. Maybe today the Lord would talk about a microchip or fuse to illustrate his teaching. If you had faith as small as an electric fuse, you could transplant a tree from soil to sea."
-Pastor David Woodward, "Full Flame: A Little Faith is All You Need," www.doorofhope.org, retrieved Mar 23, 2013, [http://www.doorofhope.org.au/content.php?page_id=98]

And what do you want to bet he's going to play up this metaphor as long as he can to fill in his required preaching time frame in his church's contract? Don't forget to read it with a sanctimonious tone:
"Like the mustard seed, the value of a fuse is not in breadth or length. The key is conductivity. Faith transfers the power of God to where it is needed.
Great power lines stretch across a whole country, carrying perhaps 110,000 volts in a single cable. Day and night, the huge power turbines are feeding the vast electrical power grid. Then, in our homes, a tiny sliver of wire is often the difference between light, warmth and energy and sitting in a dark, cold room. The vital link is the fuse.
The fuse is made of metal, such as silver wire, which offers low résistance to current. Low resistance means high conductivity. Translated into the spiritual, the lower our resistance to the Word of God, the higher the power rating. The higher our resistance and disobedience to the Word, the lower the operational power of God.
A fuse with high resistance would either carry no power at all or else soon blow. If we say we believe in the Word of God, but disobey it, we negate our faith. It blows the fuse. The power of God is little when the Word of God means little to us.
Whatever else may be true one thing is absolutely beyond contradiction, it is that Christianity is a power religion or it is nothing. "
-Pastor David Woodward, "Full Flame: A Little Faith is All You Need," www.doorofhope.org, retrieved Mar 23, 2013, [http://www.doorofhope.org.au/content.php?page_id=98]

Don't you just feel more faithful after reading that? That was a lot to quote, but I wanted the reader to see how much time a preacher can waste in a sermon. After all, a pastor's duty on Sunday morning is to put in a convincing 30-40 minutes, and that can be a long time while avoiding hardcore Biblical topics, so they have to add in lots of metaphors and stories about how when we have a flat tire, we pull through the hard times with faith.

"If you find yourself doubting and are asking 'How can I have more faith?' the answer isn't to try harder or to beat yourself up. Think of the solution this way - suppose someone said to you, 'I find myself doubting Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. I'm not sure Old Faithful can be trusted.' Your advice wouldn't be 'just try harder,' but rather 'just hang out with Old Faithful. Get to know Old Faithful' and because Old Faithful is faithful, the better you know it, the more you trust it.'"
-Pastor Nathin Martin, "Ask The Pastor: How do I have more faith?" www.christianchallenge.org, retrieved Mar 23, 2013, [http://www.christianchallenge.org/ask/MoreFaith.shtml]

This would make more sense if someone handed him a Klondike Bar after his sermon. At least then I would know what he was doing it for.

I pray that other Christians would address this point in your churches and Sunday school classes. There is nothing at all wrong with bringing up the question about faith, but the answer doesn't require years of anecdotes from the pulpit. Let us inform our brethren that we need to get past the faith issue by hearing the Word of God (Rom 10:17), so we can all move on to a thorough study of God's Word.

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