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I recently saw an editorial cartoon that depicted a two people looking at a school bookshelf with several books. If I remember correctly, the title of the book on one shelf was “Science Based Education.” The Bible, along with books with titles such as “Horoscopes” and “Fairy Tales” were on the other shelves. One person held a book titled “Flat Earth Society” while the other commented that it was only a matter of time before they demanded their voice to be heard as well.
This cartoon attempts to be funny by equating the teachings of the Bible with superstitions. Indeed, many people today view religious conviction as simple belief in hocus pocus or as requiring a preposterous blind leap into the dark unknown. On almost a weekly basis I hear people, when talking about matters of religion, disdainfully lump religious faith with belief in ancient mythology. Whenever I challenge a person to define faith, invariably I will hear that it is a “blind leap in the dark.” If I suggest otherwise, I get everything from blank stares to forceful opposition.
It seems even many people who would claim a religious heritage have accepted the idea that their faith is simply a matter of personal opinion with no possible way to provide tangible evidence for it. Thus, it is presumed no more valid than the personal opinion of the person next to them. Religious conviction is often conceived of as being no different than one’s personal conviction that vanilla ice cream is better than chocolate.
In this article, I would like to challenge this idea and propose that religious conviction can be based on more objective criteria than mere personal taste -– that what matters, in fact, is what we put our faith in. Faith does not require blindness as a prerequisite. In fact, I want to suggest that Christian belief cannot be blind. If it is, it is not the kind of faith God wants us to have.
As a person trained in the Army to be a paratrooper, I learned that what matters in a jump is not so much the amount of faith a jumper has that his equipment will work, but rather what matters is the reliability of the equipment. A person could have all the faith in the world that their chute will open, but if the chute is faulty or was packed wrong, the jumper’s faith is in vain. On the other hand, even if a person has very little faith that his chute will open correctly, if it is reliable equipment and packed correctly, the chute will operate just as it is designed to do. I had faith that my chute would work; that is the only way I would jump out of a perfectly good airplane. But, that faith was based on evidence of trustworthiness. I had witnessed hundreds of other jumps and had known of thousands of previous jumps that were all successful, and this gave me confidence to jump myself. My “jump” was really a calculated step based on evidence.
Without faith based on evidence, we couldn’t drive down a two-lane road. How do you know the driver of another vehicle won’t swerve into your lane and hit you head on? You can never be 100% certain because we are talking about the unseen future and about freedom of action and will. However, you can still have confidence enough to drive based on your own experience and observation as well as other data that demonstrates the reliability of vehicles staying in their lanes. You trust that as evidence enough to get in your vehicle and put your life on the line.
In both of these cases, faith is required, but it is not a blind leap. As A.J. Hoover has said, “Faith is a reasonable trust based on adequate evidence.” So it is when we think about convictions concerning the supernatural. Does God exist? Has he revealed himself to humans? How can we know? How can we be sure? When we examine these questions and honestly look at the evidence surrounding us, we can take steps of faith that are not blind leaps, but are reasonable and logical steps and based on data and evidence. So, realizing belief is not blind, the argument shifts from concern over faith itself to concern over evidence. And, that is where the argument should be. God wants us to examine the world around us and base our convictions on the evidence he has provided, especially in his Son, Jesus. He invites us to come, look, and see!
Mark Henry, a retired US Army Chaplain, is the preaching minister for the TurnAgain Church of Christ in Anchorage, Alaska. He and his wife, Lezlie, have two children in high school. Mark has a Bachelor of Science degree from West Point and the Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees from Abilene Christian University.
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