What is faith? How do you measure it? How do you live it?
Skepticism is very trendy today. Doubt seems to be a leading virtue. Is faith even reasonable in this generation? The brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking said that Heaven was a fairy tale invented by those who are afraid of the dark. I know that we are supposed to genuflect before the specialists. But I suggest, in this case, that his genius mind had strayed into paths it could not comprehend. Realms for which it had no calculus. I do not fault him for this. Believer and unbeliever alike have said so many silly things about faith that our esteemed professor can be forgiven for having no foundation from which to consider it.
Heaven does not demand blindness. It heals it. Faith is not blind; it is simply trusting what you have good evidence to believe is true. Having a rational faith does not mean having a complete answer to every question. No area of life works that way. Just because something is unexplained does not mean that it is unexplainable.
Faith is not belief despite the evidence. Biblical faith is evidence-based belief. It is our reasonable reaction to reality. Faith does not go against the evidence, but it does go beyond it. It takes a step. A reasonable step. with any important matter in life you can only get to probability with your reason. In order to get to certainty, you need to commit. You must take a step. This is true when deciding to marry someone, or whether to hire someone. Or choosing to trust someone. My reason is not opposed to my faith. My reason leads me to my faith.
The opposite of faith is not reason; the opposite of faith is unbelief. Some have told me that they cannot believe; that faith is fine for me, but they are incapable of it. But is that something you can know about yourself? You can know that you cannot fly. You can know that you cannot run fifty miles-per-hour. But you cannot know that you can’t believe. That is something that you believe about yourself. You believe that you can’t believe. Which, of course, is self-contradicting.
I would even say that my unbelieving materialist friends have much more faith than I do. Atheist astronomer Fred Hoyle famously likened the notion of life developing on its own in the universe, to a tornado blowing through a junkyard and assembling a fully functional Boeing 747. I have enough faith to accept the virgin birth of a certain child. That seems reasonable to me. I will never have enough faith to accept the virgin birth of a universe.
So why must there be faith?
Because God has put enough into creation to make faith reasonable, but He has left enough out so that reason is not enough. But why give us the choice? Because He has not made us to be moist robots, incapable of choosing; but free moral beings, made in His image. He has provided enough evidence to convict, but not enough to coerce. Why? Because, again, you would have no choice. God is not looking for terrified creatures who follow Him out of fear. He is calling for sons and daughters.
Sometimes, when my children were small, they would wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. But they were afraid to walk down the hall. They were afraid of the dark. They would call out for us, and I would go to their room and take their hand, and then walk down the hall with them. In their young minds the dark hall could not be trusted. But they knew from experience that I could be trusted; that I was trustworthy. Faith is simply trusting in the One who is trustworthy.
We don’t like being thought of as children. It is an insult to our so-called enlightened age. Yet, we have these jarring words from Jesus: “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Compared to the eternity that is God what else, other than a child, could you possibly be? Children will always be younger than their father.
Heaven is no fairy tale, and I do not know any mature believers who are afraid of the dark. Instead, they have the most reasonable explanation for the existence of the dark, along with the only true hope for its removal. Isn’t it more likely that many of us, along with Mr. Hawking, have been inventing fairy tales of our own, because we are afraid of the light?
“Now we see in a mirror dimly”, the bible says, “but then, face to face.”
That means that faith will not always be required of us. But, for now, it is. Instead of scoffing and turning away. We could see it for what it truly is; an act of beauty. And in this bitter and cynical age, it is an act of beautiful rebellion.
So, take a step. I dare you.
Trust me.