Big Beliefs Mean Bold Action: What Is Faith? Pt. 3

[Continued from Part 2]

I: Involves Action

In the last two articles in this series, we’ve established that faith isn't a feeling or a sense of optimism. The Bible clearly teaches justification by faith and not works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Still, we all know that ideas have consequences. Beliefs determine behavior. If you believe that you can please God with your own righteousness, you’ll try to get into heaven by doing good works. If you truly believe that Jesus is Lord, God’s promised Messiah raised from the dead, you will begin to act in accordance with His lordship over your life.

This principle is how Scripture can say both that “one is justified by faith apart from works” and that “faith apart from works is dead.” (Romans3:28, James 2:26) One version of the law of non-contradiction states that “It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, emphasis mine) Since Paul and James are talking about different kinds of works, there is no contradiction.

The passage in James mentions Rahab, the prostitute who helped the Israelite spies when they came to Jericho. (Read the story in Joshua 2!) She told the men that the entire city had heard about the Lord’s miracles and was afraid. So why was she saved when the rest of the city was destroyed? Her actions proved that she believed that God would follow through with His promise to give the Israelites the land. Her faith was not an abstract fantasy; it involved taking bold action.

T: Takes Courage

Not only does faith require action; it sometimes requires bold, risky action. Hebrews 10 pits fear and faith as opposites: “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” (Hebrews 10:39) 

The next chapter tells of saints who did outrageous and even impossible things through faith. For some, God came through with impossible miracles in their lifetime, such as Noah, Moses’ parents, and Rahab. Yet many of them, as both verses 13-6 and 35-40 point out, actually suffered for their courageous faith and weren’t rewarded—at least not yet.

It takes courage to give everything for an unseen future. Martyred missionary Jim Eliot is often quoted as saying, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” When God makes promises, He keeps them. God does reward those who seek Him, and He has prepared a much better city for us. Yet that doesn't exempt believers from suffering in the meantime.

So believer, don’t be afraid to take action based on God's truth and promises. Whether you see people raised from death or you face death yourself, know that you were created for an eternal country of glory, and keep “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:2)

And the plot thickens... take a shortcut to the conclusion in Part Four!

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) 

How Not to Be a Super Villain

BAM! ZING! POW!

It seems like some Christians who try to defend their faith want to feel like superheroes. They think they’ve found that one perfect argument that will make them invincible, an argument that they can swing around and—WHAM!—leave those ignorant heathen too stunned to respond.

If you don’t believe me, find almost any popular video of Christian music on Youtube and read the comments. Some will make you facepalm.

The problem with this superhero mentality is that it does more harm than good. That’s right: Christians who take that approach are actually more like—gasp!—super villains!

You see, it’s not enough to be right. There’s no point in telling someone something you want them to believe unless you… really want them to believe it. And that takes a little more tact than some people are willing to use.

Aristotle wrote in The Art of Rhetoric (Book I, Part 2, Paragraph 3),

  

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided. This kind of persuasion, like the others, should be achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people think of his character before he begins to speak. It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasion; on the contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses. [emphasis mine]

So if our character, or how we’re coming across to others, is so central to changing someone’s mind, can we agree to stop slinging around “zinger” arguments? Might we even be willing to listen to why someone else believes what he does, or treat him with the kindness of God that leads to repentance (Romans 2:4)? 

Let’s put away our capes and stop trying to save the world with conceited clichés and one-liners. Look instead to how God saves a soul, and point that person to His kindness by being kind ourselves.