Why Faith is not Teflon-coated and smiley-faced

Political scientists commonly use a term to describe Cold War era politics called realpolitik. Realpolitik is a German expression that means the “politics of reality,” a foreign policy based on practical concerns rather than getting bogged down in debates about theory. Perhaps believers should come up with a similar term, realglaube (meaning “real faith”), as an honest way to describe how faith plays out in our humanness. A gritty realglaube contrasts with a Teflon-coated, smiley-faced faith that is often lauded in churches but rarely lived out consistently in our lives. Like David illustrates throughout the Psalms, we live in a state of realglaube, a constant tension between our spiritual hope in God’s deliverance and the stark reality that it doesn’t always come as we expect it to.