In 1947's Miracle on 34th Street, Maureen O'Hara's character makes a theological claim without even knowing it. She tells her questioning daughter, "Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to." Well, there you have it, world. All clear now? Except, of course, that's not what the Bible refers to as "faith." The biblical version is "to be convinced" which requires evidence and/or arguments. So let's see if we can get a grasp on these two concepts.
Imagine you are part of Israel a long time ago. You're standing on the shore of the Red Sea with the armies of Egypt charging down on you and you've no place to go. Go back and die or be a slave; go forward and drown. So the guy that led you there stands up in the evening, prays, spreads his arms, and the wind blows. It blows all night. In the morning the sea has parted, leaving a dry path across to the other side. What do you do? Common sense would tell you, "Don't go there. It's not safe." What do you do? Well, setting aside common sense for a moment, what does the evidence say? We have that all-night wind. That was odd. We have water standing. That's not normal. We have a pillar of fire between us and the pursuing army. Never seen that before. Is that all? By no means! We have 10 -- count 'em, 10 -- events previous to this. We saw water turn to blood, flies, frogs, locust. The last one told us to put blood on our doorposts and eat a particular meal while the angel of death passed over and it happened. He actually killed every firstborn in the nation ... but not ours. That's evidence. Common sense says, "Don't walk into that sea bed," but the evidence says, "The One who has done all that we've seen so far is powerful and faithful enough to get us through that."
Interestingly, common sense also tells us to believe. Actual biology professors dedicated to Evolution have told their classes, "What you see will look like design, but that doesn't mean it is." Why? Common sense would say so. God says so (Rom 1:19-20). So biblical faith is to operate on what the evidence and reasoning says is true, which is that God is real and is faithful and trustworthy. When Israel stepped onto that dry sea bed to cross to safety, they were exercising faith. They didn't know that the water wouldn't come crashing back down, but they believed it wouldn't because of the evidence. That's the faith asked of us. Not without reason or evidence, but because of it.
3 comments:
As Sproul would say, that girl expressed credulity, not faith. I imagine most religious people live by credulity, not faith. It is why so many college going Christians leave the church. They were never given any reasons for their faith, only told what to believe and not why to believe. Too often we hear people say they don't need theology, only Jesus, and then we wonder why the world mocks the church. We're a church full of blind faith morons, not reasoned faith wise ones.
We live in a world where terms are often defined by those who disagree with a particular position. Faith is one of those terms, it's been redefined by folx who are not or anti Christian to mean some sort of blind trust in nothing, instead of how you've defined it. This makes it easy to ridicule people of faith based on a false definition. It's a great tactic if you can pull it off.
Yes, David. In fact, if it wasn't already as long as it was, I had planned to point out the difference between credulity and faith.
Yes, Craig, it's what's called a "strawman argument." "You guys believe in faith" by which they mean something we don't.
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