Eighteen Inches: Pascal's Wager and the Goodness of God

Repentance and faith aren’t just an act of the intellect; they’re an act of the will. Someone may run out of intellectual arguments against Christianity yet refuse to accept the gospel. As one pastor said, if Christianity is in your head but not your heart, you’ll miss heaven by just eighteen inches! As an apologist, what do you do next?

One useful (and overlooked) art is dialogue. Asking key questions is just as crucial as crafting arguments. Gently ask your friend what keeps them from committing to belief in God. Simply blaming stubbornness or pride isn’t helpful; it’s redundant, since asserting that someone refuses to believe because they are acting stubborn is equivalent to saying that they refuse to believe because they refuse.

One excuse may be that sin is fun and giving up everything they enjoy to obey commands and do boring “church-y” work isn’t worth it. I’ll admit that I’ve seen Christians with this attitude, too.

Not only is it illogical, it reveals a distorted view of God. Its illogic is that those seeking happiness should care more about an eternal, infinite happiness or suffering than about the temporary. In 1660, Blaise Pascal wrote an argument now known as Pascal’s Wager:

“Let us then examine this point, and say, "God is, or He is not." … A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?... you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.” (Blaise Pascal, Pensees, section 1, paragraghs 233-241) 

In contrast, if you live like the God of the Bible does not exist, you may gain limited pleasure if He doesn't, but you may also suffer infinite pain in Hell if He does. Note that this only works for those who are already intellectually accepting of the gospel. Don't use it to be a super-villain to those who reject the possibility out of hand. 

The belief that earthly pleasure is a reason to reject the gospel also reveals a false view of God.  Jesus told his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount that 

“[E]veryone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:8-11) 

God is a generous father, not a grumpy kill-joy looking to steal our fun. God help us to recognize that good pleasure is the kind that doesn’t lead to emptiness and self-destruction. Moreover, great pleasure is knowing God Himself. If that doesn’t seem exciting, you have no idea what you’re missing! 

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8) 

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!

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!