A Leap into the Light: What is Faith, Pt. 2

[Continued from Part 1] 

Anything is possible if you believe it, even if it makes no sense! Right?

Wrong. That idea is repeated throughout our culture, but a biblical understanding of faith is different. There are several notable truths about faith, illustrated with an acronym FAITH:

F: Focused on God.

In the Bible, it isn’t enough to just believe in anything. Nor is it enough to “believe” in nothing in particular; “faith” without an object (or faith in faith itself) is just optimism, a useless fuzzy feeling. Effective faith is belief in truth about God: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6, ESV) I notice that it’s easy to confuse believing that with just believing in. There is no believing in God without believing that—that He exists, a good place to start; that He is faithful; that His promises are true; and so on. Otherwise, you may have positive feelings about the idea of God, but you have no faith.

The simplest description of faith comes from God’s covenant with Abraham: “And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6) Having faith meant taking God at His word. This is a good idea only if God is true to His word. Otherwise it would have been deception, not faith. The only reason Abraham’s faith was effective in justifying him was because God was able to justify him, not because Abraham “just believed” hard enough. Faith must have God as its object to be effective.

A: Always Reasonable.

God may call us to believe something hard to accept, but it will always be reasonable—in the sense that it fits with what we already know about Him. For instance, the virgin birth is a miracle that is humanly impossible, but considering that God made a whole man at creation, it was perfectly reasonable for Mary to believe that God could conceive within her the human body of her Lord. Faith is never a leap into the dark; how can that be when God is light? On the contrary, “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.” (Psalm 119:130) 

In one of the Old Testament’s greatest examples of faith, Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac in obedience to God, even though God had promised to make a nation of his descendants. When I've heard this story taught, the emphasis is usually on the unreasonableness of God’s initial command, and I admit that it would have been hard to obey. However, the Bible teaches that Abraham was logical to obey, in that “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead”. (Hebrews 11:19, NIV1984; emphasis mine) Abraham knew that God would keep His promise, and from the Genesis story, he seemed confident that both he and Isaac would come back alive. (Genesis 22:5) He acted based on what he knew about God, an act of both faith and reason.

My suspicion is that faith is so hard for us because we would rather figure life out on our own. It’s more comfortable (at first) to go with what we think makes sense. The idea of trusting God, Someone Whom we can’t figure out, is scary and means giving up control. Yet consider this: is it more reasonable to go through life making decisions based on our own limited understanding and limited experience, or to leave ourselves in the hands of the God Who knows everything, can do anything He wants to do, and passionately loves us?

So believer, don’t let this world redefine your confidence as an illogical fuzzy feeling. Focus on God and truth about Him, and believe in accordance with that truth. Know that the word of the Lord is true, and everything He does is worthy of your trust (See Psalms 33:4). 

What is faith? is continued in Part Three! 

Wow, Look at That Idea!: Jesus as the Word of God

Consider this: are words physical or conceptual things?

On the one hand, words are empirical; they can be heard aloud or seen when written. The letters or characters on a page can be measured and touched, and with the right instruments, sound waves can be measured according to size and frequency. They are made with one’s mouth and hands, certainly physical things.

On the other hand, we know that words aren’t just squiggles or vibrations. The Declaration of Independence isn’t important as a piece of paper with ink, but because the ideas it contains were central to the founding of our country. Telegraphs in Morse code existed because the buzz of dots and dashes contained a message from someone far away, not because people were still waiting for dubstep to be invented. Words mean things. If they didn’t contain an idea, they wouldn’t be words.

In other meaningful squiggles, it’s a trick question: words are both physical and conceptual. Words communicate thoughts and ideas between people by being concrete, empirical units. They convey the invisible by being visible.

The apostle John called Jesus the Word of God in his gospel and first epistle: 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1, 14)
 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. (1 John 1:1-3) 

 I've heard explanations of the Greek term “logos” as meaning some sort of mystical force of reason in the universe, and while the ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers are fascinating, I'm not persuaded that the context supports this claim. (That's not saying it can't have a double meaning, of course.) Both passages describe Jesus as the eternal God who took on physical human form to reveal God more fully. Jesus Christ Himself is the communication of the Father to humanity. He conveys the invisible by being visible. He is The Word of God.  

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation… For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Colossians 1:15, 2:9)  

Who Made God?

I admit, this question I received from a student in my 4^th grade Sunday School class made me smile. Still, it’s a fair question, if not entirely correct.

Atheists love to go after this. The idea of a supernatural being Who has always existed—isn’t that unscientific?

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote Five Ways that the existence of God can be demonstrated. The first three are cosmological (that is, having to do with the nature and origin of the universe), the fourth is more abstract, and the fifth is teleological (having to do with purpose). Read them for yourself! 

1. Motion. Aquinas argues that everything that is in motion needs to be moved by something else. His analogy of fire is a little confusing, but considering that Aquinas died over four centuries before Newton published his Laws of Motion (Principia, 1687), which state that an object at rest will remain at rest until acted upon by an outside force, this is actually pretty brilliant. This means that there must be a First Mover that needs nothing else to move it. This argument borrows heavily from Aristotle.

2. Causation. Next, he argues that everything has a cause, and nothing can cause itself. It doesn’t make sense to have a regressively infinite series of causes, because a series of causes must have a beginning. Therefore, there must be a First Efficient Cause, one which is uncaused. This Cause is God.

3. Contingency. Everything we see is contingent on something else for its existence. So why does something exist instead of nothing? If there used to be nothing, there would still be nothing—unless there is something in the universe that necessarily exists (that is, it is impossible for this thing or person to not exist). The being Who necessarily exists and on Whom everything else is contingent is God.

Taking these three arguments, it seems reasonable to believe that there is a supernatural being who is the First Mover, is the First Efficient Cause, and has always existed. What does atheism offer? Without God, matter and energy would have had to always exist or spontaneously to come uncaused into existence. Matter would have exploded, with nothing causing the explosion.  Plus, there is no explanation for why anything exists at all, because there should be nothing.

See? It’s really naturalism that’s unscientific in explaining the origin of the universe. The theory is implausible given the basics of physics. (Someone who says that the laws of science didn’t always apply has to take that assertion by faith.)

So, who made God? The answer is that nobody made God. He is, by definition, the Unmoved Mover, the First Cause, and The One Who Necessarily Exists. And there’s nothing unscientific about that.

“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:36) 

Is Faith Opposed to Reason? What is Faith? Pt. 1

You’ve probably heard people refer to “blind faith”, a “leap in the dark”, “hoping against the odds,” or “believing against the evidence.” While it might be nice to romanticize the faith and pit it against factual, calculated reasoning, this idea of faith is inconsistent with scripture and doesn’t work in the real world.

If we accept the silly idea that faith is the opposite of reason, we’ve bought into our opponents’ lies. Modern atheist Richard Dawkins said in a 1994 lecture, “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.” (You can read the entire lecture here.) 

But is faith really just an excuse for intellectual laziness?

Atheist Antony Flew debated theists R. M. Hare and Basil Mitchell on the question of the rationality of religious belief in 1948. Read it! He argued that theists make their propositions meaningless when they say things that have no possibility of contrary evidence. For instance, if a Christian receives an answer to prayer, he might see it as evidence for God, but if he does not, he explains it away by saying, “It just wasn’t God’s will.” This is illogical. Either religious claims are propositions for which the possibility of contrary evidence must exist, or they are meaningless clichés that have no truth value. He would agree with Dawkins that faith fails to take evidence into account.

Flew’s fellow Oxford professor R. M. Hare responded by pointing out that everyone has foundational assumptions that he or she holds to explain the world (he called these “bliks”). Bliks are not subject to evidence the way normal propositions are because they are not really explanations. While it is true that atheists take quite a bit by faith, this is an unsatisfying answer.

The second Oxford theist, Basil Mitchell, responded by saying that as long as we have sufficient evidence for something, it is reasonable to take the rest by faith. Although we can’t always know exactly how much evidence is enough, faith is reasonable as long as it takes the evidence into account. Mitchell’s view makes sense in light of scripture. 1 Corinthians 15 says,

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

In other words, the Bible says for itself that there is a situation under which Christianity is no longer reasonable: if Christ has not been raised from the dead. However, God has left us with overwhelming evidence for the truth of the resurrection, and from this fact we can infer the rest of Christianity. Therefore, no matter how much evil we see in the world, faith in Jesus is still the most reasonable path to take.

Hebrews 11 is all about faith. We see in verse one that “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” and in verse six that “without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.” The rest of the chapter makes it clear that the people listed here were not looking for a pie-in-the-sky easy life. They stuck to their convictions in the middle of extreme suffering because they took God at His word.

Summit Ministries notes in a 2010 article, “The Bible defines faith in a totally different way from the common understanding. Faith is not wishful thinking, blind hope, or surrender of reason. Biblical faith is a decision to believe something about God or Jesus based on evidence, the kind of evidence that would stand up in any court of law.” 

So believer, hold onto your faith. Weigh the evidence and see for yourself that Christianity is reasonable. And when you have made your choice, stand by your convictions no matter what. 

Want more on faith? Read Part Two!