With so much uncertainty that lies ahead for us all in 2024, one thing we can guarantee will happen is that all manner of “powers and principalities” will throw everything they’ve got at us to attempt to crush our spirit as a people.
How we fare in the coming year will depend largely upon how we respond spiritually. Will we approach the challenges that are sure to come with an infantile faith or with one that is full-grown?
Infantile faith
Please note that I didn’t say a “childlike faith.” A “childlike faith” is one that is pure and full and powerful and unflinching. Regardless of your religious/spiritual affiliation, we could use more folk operating with a faith like that.
An “infantile” faith, however, is one that hasn’t grown and matured over the years. It’s a faith that convinces you that some outside power is going to do for you what the Almighty gave you the power and ability to do for yourself… like a child (baby) expecting and needing a parent to tend to all their needs. An infantile faith, is thus, a faith of dependence, a faith of powerlessness, a faith of waiting on Superman, waiting on the “gubment,” waiting on Obama, or anybody other than yourself to deal with and solve your problems.
An infantile faith is also extremely immature and foolish. Such a faith convinces us that we can do anything, say anything, treat anybody any kind of way, mistreat our own mind/body and spirit, and that there will be no consequences for our actions because we can just pray all our bad decisions away.
When our ancestors were enslaved, “massa” drilled into their heads an infantile faith that preached to us a message of 1) total obedience to “massa” who was all-powerful because he/she was God’s representative on earth; 2) total powerlessness, because we had no ability to change our condition beyond submitting to the will of “massa” and/or some other outside force; and 3) total dependence on “massa” or some other outside force because we were merely filthy rags whose salvation resided somewhere outside of ourselves.
That kind of faith will have us as individuals, as families, as faith institutions, as communities, and as a collective people, getting steamrolled right out of relevance and/or existence. If we want the power to confront and overcome the approaching challenges of 2024, we’re gonna need our faith to grow the hell up!
Grown up faith
A full-grown, mature faith has graduated from the idea that salvation lies outside of ourselves, and that we are but helpless beings waiting for that outside force to come to the rescue.
A grown up faith isn’t afraid of the words from scripture that neither “massa” nor oh so many modern-day faith leaders seem to want to share with their flock – the words Jesus spoke to his followers in John 14:12 – “What I can do, you can do, and even greater things shall you do.” A person practicing a grown up faith realizes that while most folk are waiting on Jesus to fix all our problems, Jesus is waiting on us to recognize the power that the Almighty granted each of us.
Why do you think Jesus cussed out his disciples when they couldn’t heal that father’s “demon-possessed” child in the scripture? After the child’s father went to Jesus and informed him that his disciples failed to heal his son, and all those saints who have faithfully attended Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, and Worship Service for a gazillion years already know what Jesus told his followers: “You faithless and perverse generation. How much longer must I be with you… If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could tell this mountain to move from here to there, and it would move. Nothing would be impossible for you.”
Again, while Jesus’s disciples were waiting on him to do all the work, Jesus was waiting on them to wake up to their own messiah potential. Yet, here we are in 2024, still waiting on Jesus, while Jesus is still waiting on us – waiting for us to adopt a grown up kinda faith where we recognize our own responsibility in this faith journey; and that the divine salvation we’ve been waiting on has been inside of us the whole time.
One of my mentors, Ada Edwards, was fond of saying, “Pray like it all depends on God, but work like it all depends on you.” She also liked to use that quote used by countless souls over the decades: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
The challenges that lie ahead, the ones that threaten to do harm to our children, families, seniors, communities, entrepreneurs, educational institutions, and places of worship, demand a grown up faith; one where we recognize our own inner divinity. We have the power and ability to practice such a liberating and empowering and grown-up faith, but must be of made up minds to do so.
