A Christian, who accepts his beliefs without evidence, simply on blind faith, will react emotionally instead of rationally to a skeptic’s legitimate doubts. He will demand the skeptic simply accept his beliefs without argument.
This Christian has not removed the barriers of disbelief for the skeptic. In fact, he has erected an additional barrier: one of irrational, anti-intellectualism.
When Peter encouraged us to be prepared to give to every man an answer for the hope we have, he intended us to contend rationally for the faith. Arguments of “I just believe it” or “Because God said it” are not adequate answers.
It is not rational to appeal to God’s sovereignty as authority for a skeptic to believe when the skeptic rejects God’s sovereignty. Paul appealed to Scripture when debating with the Jews. He used reason when debating with the Greeks.
I believe that God gives enough evidence to satisfy a humble believer and not enough evidence for the arrogant skeptic.
Our pursuit should not be for the evidence, though. Our pursuit should be for God. But God gives us evidence to satisfy the intellect he also gave us. God gives us evidence so that we can know him more. Evidence cements our faith. Faith is not believing in something that isn’t there. Faith is believing in the evidence that something is there even if we don’t see it.
It is hard work, but a diligent pursuit of God requires using our minds to find truth. The pursuit of God is not some passive experience. (Kind of like how most people treat Sunday morning church service. They put their lives on autopilot for an hour and a half. Then go home and do their real worshipping in front of their T.V. watching their football team.) Pursuing God means not only knowing what you believe. Knowing what you believe is the easy part. A genuine pursuit of God is knowing why you believe it.
Why is God’s word authoritative? How do I know it’s reliable? Why are there 66 books in the Bible? Did the resurrection actually happen? Why is the bodily resurrection of Jesus important? Why is it important that the Genesis record of Creation is a literal account? How shall we then live? These are some good questions that if we knew the answers to we can actually remove barriers of doubt for some skeptics.
If you go to dictionary.com and type in the word “faith” you get this as the first definition: confidence or trust in a person or thing. When you type in “belief” you get this: something believed; an opinion or conviction.
The problem with the Church today is that some Christians think they have faith when they merely have beliefs.
I completely agree with the assessment, but I have to admit I wonder what your solution is to the problem. This issue is real and ongoing. I have seen this first-hand as we release youth and young adults from “programs” in the church that are supposed to be teaching them these skills, yet fail miserably. Programs that are taking the place of the people who SHOULD be teaching them these skills, facts, and faith, their parents!
I am not sure to what “programs” you are referring, but the Church has done an abysmal job of equipping our youth to meet the challenges of the intellectual arena.
I suspect the programs you refer to are more of the same anti-intellectual “preaching” that believes doubt is sin and evidence is the opposite of faith. Apologetics is not convincing people to believe what we believe. It is convincing people to believe the evidence. Once you establish that God’s Word is reliable based on the evidence, people will be more willing to believe what God said.
I believe the solution is robust discipleship. True discipleship is training people in the evidence and arguments of the faith, not in simply giving them the steps to take to, say, avoid stress, or to treat your spouse better or to be more joyful givers. Don’t get me wrong. I believe those principles for right living are important. But I don’t get to trusting what God says about how I am to live without trusting his word is reliable. I don’t get to trusting in the reliability of God’s word without evidence.
Do you think the disciples would have given up their lives if they didn’t believe the evidence? Study the evidence for the actual, historical event of the resurrection and that evidence will inspire your faith. Faith is trusting the evidence is telling us the truth. We do not see Jesus right now, but the evidence drives our faith that he is there.
Your assessment of the failure of parents is dead on. Parents ship kids off to school to have other teach them reading, writing and arithmetic. They then ship the kids off to Sunday School and youth group for others to teach them “religion.” But the hour and a half a week is no match for Nickalodeon, Hanna Montana, Guitar Hero, Just Dance, Grand Theft Auto. Meanwhile parents are too busy with college football (especially in the South), Twilight, Les Miserables, Downton Abbey, American Idol, et al.
Christian parents are consumed with worshipping their idols and trying to balance God in that too. Until the church members tear down their idols, we are not likely to see an effective Church.
Yes, you are correct. Those are the “programs” I was talking about. It is sad to look at the state of the church, and the country for that matter and see how we, the Christian church has failed miserably. As far as faith being the belief of evidence, I would agree to a certain extent. In our faith life there will be times when there is no evidence beyond the trust that we have in God, no real reason to trust or have faith outside of the blind faith that we are required to have when nothing, and I mean nothing seems to make sense. These are the times that we must rely on God and have, what is as close to blind faith as we can.
But, in saying all that I do have to say that we have done a really bad job at teaching anyone to think on their own, to research anything and be something more than a pew warmer and follower. Even those who have been against Christianity, in my experience, have done very little “research” and have made very little, if nay, when asked to do so. We are living in a lazy society.
I totally agree that deep, meaningful discipleship is the key to changing all this. This is totally absent from most churches and without it things will not change for the better.
I appreciate your post and reply. Thank you for sharing!
You are right that even skeptics are lazy and do not want to do the research. Acquiring knowledge by feelings is not something unique to Christians. For instance, I have recently stumbled on this truth:
An agnostic is nothing more than a lazy atheist. He is too lazy to do the research one way or the other and clothes himself in a false humility that one cannot really know for sure if their is a God. Yet, he chooses to live his life as if there is no God anyway.