The Problem with Faith
Fill in the blank: “In order to please God, you have to accept the ______ as true, not asking for proof, not looking for evidence, but simply accepting it.”
- If you’re in a Christian church, the preacher is likely to insert the word “Bible” in this sentence.
- If you’re in a Mormon church, the preacher is likely to use the phrase “Book of Mormon.”
- If you’re speaking to a Muslim, you’re likely to hear the word “Quran” in this sentence.
I’ve heard the opening sentence above used in all of these contexts – with the word “Bible” and the phrase “Book of Mormon” and the word “Quran,” depending on who’s speaking. So what’s an honest seeker supposed to do? How do we know what to believe? Is God testing us by asking us to believe something without proof? It reminds me of the Mark Twain quote: “Faith is believing what you know ain't so.” The title of this article is The Problem with Faith – but the problem is not really with faith, but with the misunderstanding of faith by both believers and unbelievers alike.
I don’t know about Mormonism or Islam, but I know that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Biblical concept of faith. Mark Twain was a great writer but not such a great theologian. Biblical faith is not believing something without evidence, but rather placing our trust in Jesus after being convinced by the evidence.
I like the analogy of the tightrope walker. He has a wheelbarrow and he asks the crowd:
“Who thinks that I can push someone across this tightrope in this wheelbarrow?”
The crowd goes crazy – “Yes, you can do it! I know you can do it! We believe in you! Do it!” Then the tightrope walker asks:
“Who will volunteer to get in the wheelbarrow while I push it across? You, sir? How about you, ma’am? How about you, young man?”
Everyone backs off, awkwardly making excuses – “Well, I have this fear of heights … I’m not really limber enough to climb into a wheelbarrow … you probably want someone less heavy than me …” Finally someone steps up and says:
“I’m willing to get in the wheelbarrow. I’m scared to death but I think you can do it, so even though it’s a risk, I’m getting in.”
Who has faith? Not the crowd that was so verbal about their “faith,” but rather the person who put his fate in the hands of the tightrope walker. But why would he do such a thing?
He does it because he’s seen the tightrope walker navigate the rope – he’s familiar with his training, his background, his trustworthiness, his talent, and his ability. Furthermore, he looks behind him and sees death and destruction rapidly approaching – the only way to escape and be saved from certain death is to place his life in the hands of the tightrope walker.
It doesn't matter if you are intellectually convinced or if you have doubt. It doesn’t matter how you feel – what matters is if you get in the wheelbarrow. If you get in, you will be saved. If not, you will be lost.
I don't have blind faith. I've studied apologetics, historical records of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, philosophical arguments for and against the God of the Bible, and so on. I'm intellectually convinced that Jesus rose from the dead and that He is therefore trustworthy. But that’s not what saves me. It’s Jesus who saves me because I've decided to take a step of faith – not blind faith, but Biblical faith – to put my life in his hands. Is it a risk? Yes. But I think it's more of a risk to NOT get in the wheelbarrow.
Jesus and the early Christians emphasized evidence. Jesus said in John 10:38, “You might not believe what I’m telling you, but what about the miracles that I’m doing? Don’t they compel you to believe?” The apostles’ sermons emphasized the Old Testament prophecies that Jesus fulfilled and the eyewitnesses to his resurrection. They didn’t ask people to believe without evidence – they asked people to believe because of the evidence. Apologetics is much different today than it was in New Testament times because the culture today is much different, but the basic idea is the same: Biblical faith rests on evidence.
You might believe without evidence. That’s fine, but don’t ask other people to believe without evidence – that just undermines the Gospel message. The Christian Gospel is above all a question of history. Either Jesus lived, died, and rose again … or He did not. If He did, then Christianity is true; if He did not, then Christianity is false.
Some Christians believe because that’s the way they were raised. They don’t know why they believe – they just believe. If they were raised Mormon, they would be Mormon – if they were raised Muslim, they’d be Muslim – if they were raised without religion, they’d be atheist or agnostic – but they were raised Christian, so they’re Christian. They don’t think about their faith – they just believe. They’re “Mark Twain Christians.” They’re very lucky that they stumbled into faith because of the way they were raised. Dumb luck. But God doesn’t save us because we’re smart – he saves us by grace due to no merit of our own.
Hebrews 11:6 says that “faith is evidence … faith is substance.” Evidence and substance are tangible – something that you can touch and see and hear. Biblical faith is not believing apart from evidence – it is rather a tangible, quantifiable characteristic that other people can see it in our lives. They can see by the way we live that we trust Jesus. This is the basic message of the book of James: “Even the demons believe. So what? Who cares?”
The question is, How is my life different because of my faith? How are my words different? How are my vacations different? How are my actions different at home and at work? How is my bank account different? How do I love and forgive differently than unbelievers? In what ways do I depend on Jesus to tell me how to live, speak, act, and live? When was the last time you did something that the world thought was unreasonable because you trust in Jesus? “Faith is evidence … faith is substance.” Stop talking about faith and get in the wheelbarrow.
"... if they were raised without religion, they’d be atheist or agnostic –" and nowadays, increasingly another category can be added to the list: neo-pagan ("New Age"). The devil is good at recruiting minds built on sand.
ReplyDeleteDoubt and unbelief are different in that doubt is the act of weighing the risk of believing while unbelief is to not risk belief in the first place. Doubt is an expected state of mind for anyone who believes something (and is acting on it) because all belief entails risk; it is always possible to be wrong. The connection between belief and action in the Bible - in Hebrew culture - is inseparable. The word "to know" in Hebrew is to acknowledge, to act on what one knows. Example: "The Lord knows the way of the righteous ... " (Psalm 1) means that the Lord is actively engaged in the life of the righteous. It is not a detached philosophical stance. When Jesus in the judgement says to the wicked, "I never knew you ..." it means he was never involved in their lives (and will not be in the future). The Garden of Eden story has more examples, about "knowing" good and evil.
Yes, those are good points. I especially like your point about doubt, which I'll probably write about at some point in the future. We typically hear that Christians have to get rid of doubt in order to please God, live a victorious life, etc. But as far as I can see, you can't have faith without doubt. If you don't have doubt then it's not faith, it's knowledge and certainty. "Faith" has two opposites - "unbelief" on the one end, and "knowledge" on the other end.
DeleteAnd the Greek word for "faith" is "pistis" which is often translated "faithfulness," which is, of course, intimately connected with obedience.
Feucht's First Law of Bible reading is to not trust the translators but to look at what they were looking at. In the NT, where it is translated in the KJV that "some doubted", this is the wrong verb in the context of our discussion; they simply did not believe the gospel.
DeleteRegent College in Vancouver, BC in years past held a two-week summer course on "Christian Faith and Natural Science". One of the teachers became one of my mentors: Walter Thorson. He went the MIT-Caltech route in chemistry but did not receive tenure at MIT, probably because he was spending too much time counseling students on the Way of life. He ended up at the U. of Alberta in Edmonton, where one small-world Western Camp story involved my discovery that Sabos knew him. Another is that his wife, Mary Baer, came from the Syracuse (?), NY ACCN. He taught this regent C. course, I acq
uired the audiotapes from it, and have them. If you have an interest in them - ans they seem like they are down the line of your present thinking - I should put them into your possession. You'll need a cassette tape player. If not you, than anyone else reading this who is interested should contact me (dfeucht at protonmail dot com) for further discussion about the tapes.
ReplyDelete(Edited reply - please delete previous two and this sentence.)
ReplyDeleteFeucht's First Law of Bible reading is to not trust the translators but to look at what they were looking at. In the NT, where it is translated in the KJV that "some doubted", this is the wrong verb in the context of our discussion; they simply did not believe the gospel.
Regent College in Vancouver, BC in years past held a two-week summer course on "Christian Faith and Natural Science". One of the teachers became one of my mentors: Walter Thorson. He went the MIT-Caltech route in chemistry but did not receive tenure at MIT, probably because he was spending too much time counseling students on the Way of life. He ended up at the U. of Alberta in Edmonton, where one small-world Western Camp story involved my discovery that Sabos knew him. Another is that his wife, Mary Baer, came from the Syracuse (?), NY ACCN. He taught this Regent C. course, I acquired the audiotapes of it, and have them. If you have an interest in them - and they seem like they are down the line of your present thinking - I should put them into your possession. You'll need a cassette tape player. If not you, then anyone else reading this who is interested should contact me (dfeucht at protonmail dot com) for further discussion about acquiring the tapes.
That's super interesting about Walter Thorson. I've heard his name frequently, but I never before heard these "small world" stories.
DeleteI kind of agree with you about translators. The nice thing is that we have so many different translations, commentaries, and other Bible study tools nowadays, almost all available online, and we can check the translators' work ourselves. Of course, it's ironic that those tools are used so little in this day and age when they are so widely accessible.
These tools are available as part of the package that comes with the computerized English Standard Bible. Click on a word in KJV or ESB and the Greek or Hebrew word and its definition appears on the side. Although this is insightful, it is inadequate because a knowledge of history is also required, and this includes the forgotten/ignored/avoided history, which is very insightful in connecting the factual pieces of the puzzle into a coherent picture.
DeleteOne publisher has specialized in printing books on this history: artisanpublishers.com For starters, try E. Raymond Capt's Missing Links book in which he expounds upon the major discovery of the historical link between where the early 19th century classic work by English lawyer-historian Sharon Turner, titled The History of the Anglo-Saxons, traces them back to cities in NW Persia (Media), then loses the trail picked up in the late 20th century by Scottish-American archaeologist Ray Capt. Israel appears all over in the Assyrian tablets of the royal library of Ashurbanipal (in the British Museum in London) but not by their Hebrew name. Translators have missed this.
So where are the "ten lost tribes" of Israel? They never have been lost; they migrated into Europe as the Scythians and Cimmerians - the barbed-Aryans. The evidence for this is substantial but it controverts some of the foundations of Western historiography, based on the Greek and Roman writings obtained from the Muslims in the Middle Ages.