Christians have no need of evidence; we have belief.
The Reality
This is a tricky one, especially when you throw in Hebrews 11:1:
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."Does this mean belief in something is just as good as hard evidence? If so, how does one know what to believe?
I think it's necessary for there to be a balance between faith and evidence. There should definitely be some basis for your beliefs, but in many cases, it's a bit of a cycle: Evidence leads to belief. Belief, if well-placed and sincerely felt, leads to actions which lead to further revealing of evidence.
An example could be choosing a spouse: When choosing a spouse, I must first look for evidence that she is trustworthy, faithful, upstanding, and an overall good choice for devoting my love and affection. And, while I can do my best to gather all that information and examine the evidence, it will ultimately require an amount of faith in that person, because they can't prove that they're a good wife before they're a wife. But, if that faith is well-placed, it will yield further evidence, which will in turn strengthen my faith in her.
A friend of mine, Paul "Shammah" Pavao, shared an example of faith that resulted in evidence:
1985, I think. My sister sends me a letter that my nephew Joseph has lost all his sight in one eye and 50% in the other. Infection's been increasing for 18 months, and the Air Force has moved her to Andrews AFB so she can be treated at some really good medical facility there. I'm in Germany, and when I get the letter, friends and I pray for around an hour. I could feel the "release" as we prayed, and afterward I told my friends that I felt like God heard us but something didn't quite feel complete. Two weeks later, I got another letter, which had to have been sent a week after we prayed, saying that my nephew had 100% of his sight back, and the infection had retreated. They didn't know why. The infection was not quite gone, explaining what I was feeling way over in Germany, though it disappeared over the next few months.
I think that feeling of "release" I had was faith that was the evidence of things not yet seen. It was the substance--something tangible--of what we were hoping for.
Why It Matters
Our belief should not be the basis of truth. Instead, the truth should be the basis of our belief. To believe something without cause is like jumping from an airplane without first making sure you're wearing a parachute. I think some people mistakenly confuse following God blindly with following God without reason.
If my wife blindfolded me and ask me to let her lead me around the room, then I would have no problem following her blindly, but only because I know her and have reason to trust her. If a stranger blindfolded me and asked me to follow him, I would not comply, because I have no basis for my faith.
Likewise, we must get to know God. The more I know Him, the stronger my faith becomes.
To me, there are two passages that, when taken together, provide an exceptionally good understanding of this issue. The first of these passages is where we are told to "walk by faith and not by sight" and the second is the parable of the wise and foolish builders. For starters, I like the contrast between faith and sight because it is simply erroneous to set up faith against evidence in general and the words "sight" is very good at suggesting just that kind of evidence which faith is frequently set against.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the image that I get from these passages is a man walking along an island of sand. All around him there are fruit-bearing plants and bushes with twigs and leaves that are perfect for building fires, but he knows he cannot build a home there because even though the island is very large it still never rises more than a few feet above the ocean and there could at any moment come a wave capable of completely reshaping the whole place. As he goes along, the man drags his feet through the sand, feeling his way along. Eventually he finds a rock buried beneath the sand. He still can't see it, but after a while he is able to get a rough understanding of size and shape of the rock. He may look around and see fruits ripe for the picking in the distance while the only trees that grow on the rock are thorny and uninviting, but he will make his home on the rock nonetheless. He does this because even though his sight is telling him that the rock is a barren place, he knows from experience and from speculation that when the storms come the sand will simply wash away and give him no safety while the rock will hold firm. The trees may look unpleasant, but if he can build a shelter using them for support or rely on them to discover the rock's hidden holes and crevices, that shelter will easily outlast any built in the appealing places of the island.
Another useful analogy might be that of a foreigner who relies upon a local guide to point out what is and is not safe or the story of how Bilbo and the dwarves followed and eventually left (to their detriment) the path that Beorn had shown them in "The Hobbit". In each case, we are able to see clearly that the conflict is not between blind faith and strong evidence, but rather between old, established evidence and current evidence. When I trust myself to God, I do it because the evidence I have received in the past through speculation, through personal experience, and on the authority of trustworthy sources is so overwhelming that to doubt God because it looks like He will not pull through is downright idiotic.
ReplyDeleteNow there are two kinds of people that I would expect to take issue with what I have said so far: the skeptic who believes that there is no such overwhelming evidence and the believer who is somehow convinced that we are not being faithful if we are relying on evidence. I'm not interested in replying to the skeptic here, chiefly because such a person is unlikely to ever read this post, except to say that if they do not think there is good evidence for God and the Christian understanding of Him, they have probably not seriously looked for any. The believer, on the other hand, I am in the mood to address. Firstly, our God is a god of reason. The Bible frequently states the wisdom and skillfulness displayed in Creation and in the history of His people and it is also doubtful that the One who endowed us with reason would not Himself be rational. Additionally, virtually every time God commands His followers to do anything in the Bible, He gives them proof of His identity. The time when God first appears to Moses is a good example of this in that He first appears to Moses in an unmistakably supernatural manner and then gives him a series of signs by which the Hebrews and Pharaoh will know who sent him and then even goes as far as to tell him what will happen beforehand so that even the circumstances which would otherwise discourage Moses serve as evidence that he did in fact encounter God in that cave. Finally, there is the fear among some believers that evidence leaves no room for faith. This fear is completely unrealistic, as anyone who has ever had to remember the logically strong evidence of the past in the presence of the emotionally strong evidence of the present will tell you.
I like what you have to say. Do I know you? :-)
ReplyDelete