I remember a
student who dropped
by our home some years ago on his way
around
Europe. Almost
immediately he began to share with us his intense
enthusiasm of
his newfound
faith in Christ. After listening for some
time, I began to
grow uneasy.
I felt suspicious that his faith, though
enthusiastic,
was almost
entirely groundless. Eventually I asked him how
he had become a
Christian
and why he had believed, and then asked him how
he would answer
some of
the questions that his forthcoming semester at a
French
university was bound
to raise.
Finally with
great reluctance,
I warned him that his faith seemed to have
very little
foundation.
And that unless he had more understanding to
match his
enthusiasm, he
was in danger of being tripped by the questions
of life - not to
speak of
his follow students. He listened politely, and
if he showed no
concern,
at least he took no offense and we parted on
good terms.
Within a
month I received
a letter, short and to the point. "I'm writing
to tell you that
I no longer
believe in God or consider myself a
Christian."
And then
after a brief explanation, "The only reason I write
to you is that
you warned
me this would happen." For every person who
experiences what
this student
did, countless others are potentially as
vulnerable.
It is
only their sheltered lives that keep them from facing
the same problem.
I cannot
emphasis this point
too often: understanding Christians know not
only what they
believe but
why they believe. They are able to say that
what they
believe is true,
and behind such a statement they have sure and
sufficient
reasons of which
they are fully persuaded.
When someone
has faced the
critical nature of his or her dilemma without
God and has come
to recognize
that if God's revelation is true there is a
meaningful
answer to their
dilemma, then the next urgent question is: But
how do I know
God's revelation
is true?
If the
searcher finds no
answer to that question or if the question is
not encouraged
(or still
worse, not allowed), then the searcher may
become a
believer, but he
or she will be constantly at the mercy of the
potential doubt
that faith
is only make-believe. He or she will never
be certain that
it is not
a form of psychological wish-fulfillment and
that belief in
God is not
purely a result of a need for God - a faith for
foxholes, a God
of the gaps,
a crutch.
This doubt is
hardly new,
but today's intellectual climate provides an
ideal breeding
ground, and
it has come into its own again. It is a very
damaging doubt
that needs
to be blocked firmly by a decisive
reaffirmation of
what it
means that the Christian faith is true.
The Christian
faith is not
true because it works. It works because it is
true. No
issue is
so fundamental both to the searcher and to the
believer as the
question
of truth. The uniqueness and trustworthiness of
the Christian
faith rest
entirely on its claim to be the truth. God, who
is the Father of
Jesus Christ,
is either there or he is not there.
Either he has
spoken or
he has not spoken. What his revelation claims is
either true or
false.
Jesus Christ either rose from the dead or he
didn't.
There are
no two ways about it. This stubborn insistence on
truth is one
thing that
lifts the Christian faith out of the common pool
of completely
personal,
relativistic, subjective beliefs.
Naturally the
stronger the
claims to truth that we make for the Christian
faith, the
stronger our
substantiations must be. The Christian faith is
not true because
it makes
its claims more boldly or loudly than anything
else (or belief
would be
overtaken by bravado). If it claims to be true,
it must be
willing to show
the areas in which the evidence for its claims
can be examined
and found
to be true. At this point the Christian faith
is not only
willing it is
eager. The Christian faith invites people to
an examined
faith.
Although we Christians should believe simply, we
should not
"simply believe."
For one thing the pale brand of modern
faith that
lapses into "easy
believism" has little in common with the
virile attitude
of understanding-plus-commitment
that is the biblical
notion of faith.
Is truth
merely a brittle
recitation of facts? A sterile compliance with
logic? Far
from it.
Passion for truth is passion for God. No wonder
our Christian
responsibility
is to understand and be able to express what
we believe and
why.
Or, as the Apostle Peter expressed it, "Be always
ready with your
defense
whenever you are called to account for the hope
that is in you."
If you
hear someone claiming to believe something but
even after
listening carefully
it never becomes clear exactly what he or
she believes, or
why, you
are surely entitled to wonder if the belief is
valid at
all. Unless
our Christian faith includes this level of
understanding,
we are short
changing ourselves.
[A
qualification must be
added here. People often misunderstand the
rationality of
faith.
They imagine that they believed in God because
faith is
rational
- which it is. But they then expect every aspect of
faith to be
equally open
to rational investigation - which it isn't. So
when they come
across the
first mystery they can't understand, they
conclude that
the Christian
faith is irrational after all. God has led
them to believe
it was rational,
but now apparently he has cheated them
by unfairly
slipping in
a mystery.
What they
forget is that
rationality is opposed to absurdity, not to
mystery.
The rationality
of faith goes hand in hand with the mystery of
faith. The
fact is
that the greatest mystery of all - the Incarnation-
comes at the
beginning and
is the central reason why we believe in God.
We cannot
explain it: That
is the beginning of the mystery of faith. But
because of the
evidence
neither can we explain it away: That is the
beginning of the
rationality
of faith.
Again,
rationality is the
alternative to absurdity, but it has no quarrel
with
mystery. Mystery
is beyond human reason, but it is not against
reason. It
is a mystery
only to us and not to God. Where God has spoken
and spoken
clearly, rationality
comes into its own; where God has not
spoken, or for
his own reasons
has not spoken clearly, there is the area
of mystery.]
We should all
examine the
foundations of our faith. Why do we believe
God is
there? Why
do we believe God is good? How do we know Jesus ever
lived? How
do we know
Jesus rose from the dead? Why do we trust the
authority of the
Bible?
How do we understand that the Christian faith is
true? How
would we
answer a modern philosopher, a Freudian psychologist,
the follower of
an Indian
guru, each of whom denies the truth of the
Christian faith
in a different
way?
The challenges
to faith will
go on and must go on being answered. As we
face the issues
and questions
before each of us now, do we know why we
believe?
Are we able
to relate and apply faith to life without
suppressing
questions and
without unnerving our security?
Trinity Forum
- Washington D.C.
NEWS
.
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