Reasonable Faith

This will be the first entry in a series of essays. In this one I attempt to understand faith by defining it. Follow along at your own peril.

Introduction

I began my Christian life on feelings. From what I understand, this is pretty common. I felt condemned, ashamed, and guilty; and because I grew up in a Christian culture I knew this was a cue to appeal to God.

After making this appeal to God, my feelings changed. I felt peace and love and joy. But with time these good feelings faded and so did my confidence that I was truly Christian. I felt that if good feelings accompanied my decision to follow Christ then they should remain with me. So I alternated between chasing those feelings and wallowing in doubt. The feelings did return on occasion, often enough that I continued to believe in their necessity and in my own deficiency when they were missing. Years later I realized that what I was actually missing, was faith.

Christians all know that faith is of vital importance. You can tell by the way we talk about it. We express concern when our faith is weak. We say we need to “go in faith” when we are uncertain.  And many of us know the passage of Scripture by heart which tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God.¹

In spite of its importance, it seems that faith is seldom spelled out. This might be because everyone else already knows the definition and is just waiting for me to catch up. In any case, what follows is my attempt to define what faith is and explain how I understand it so far.

Defining faith

In the simplest terms I can conceive, (Christian) faith is:

1. the belief that what the Bible says is true and;²

2. —upon believing what it says in the Bible, we exhibit behaviors that uphold this belief.

These two things combine for a biblical definition of living faith. James and Hebrews use different terms to describe this, but their definitions agree.³

Faith contains both a visible and invisible element, like an iceberg. When you see an iceberg, you know that a large percentage of it lies unseen below the surface. The same can be said for a person’s faith. You cannot see what he believes in his heart, but you can see his actions; and by them you can draw some conclusions about what lies beneath the surface.

We (kind of) act in faith in many small ways in the course of an ordinary day. For example, I believe that if I walk through a puddle that is deeper than about an inch and a half, water will soak through my shoes and get my feet wet. I may therefore deviate from the direct route to my destination to go around puddles. (Invert this example for 8-year-olds.) My belief leads me to behave in this way; my behavior is evidence of my belief . (and my aversion to wet socks)

Christian beliefs are not incoherent or disconnected, but form a coherent belief system that we refer to as the faith. Belief systems orient and motivate their adherents. There are other belief systems in the world which play much the same role that faith does for us, but cannot be referred to as real faith because they are not strictly true. At some point they break down and become incoherent. These beliefs are philosophical in nature and try to answer the same questions that faith does for us. What is the meaning of life? why am I here? Like my aversion to wet socks, how we answer these questions will impact the way we navigate life.

I might conclude, for example, that life is all about the pursuit of pleasure; so I will do things that are entertaining, tasty, or sensual. Or perhaps I am convinced life is all about power, so I might try to gain influence and wield it over others; or blame my sorry circumstances on the influential. When these beliefs form the nucleus of my belief system, they are the primary motivation behind my actions.

Pursuing power or pleasure are natural desires of man. If I decide that one of these is the central purpose of human existence, I am merely rationalizing my base desires. Christians oppose these desires and instead seek to align themselves with the will of God. We commit to wanting what God wants, over and above what we want. This makes Christian faith a counter-intuitive belief system that is not immediately gratifying like the others I mentioned.

Following Abraham’s example

Abraham is the father of faith for a reason, and exemplified this counter-intuitive belief in God. After promising Abraham an inheritance, God told him to leave his father’s country. And, Abraham obeyed; leaving home without even knowing his destination.⁴

God does not communicate with us in the same way he did with Abraham. We have his Word mediated to us in the form of a book while God spoke to Abraham directly. But God’s Word is God’s Word and contains the same elements today that were present in his communication with Abraham—promises and commandments.

Our response to God’s Word should imitate Abraham’s. First by believing God’s promises and then obeying his commands. Our obedience is the works which follows our belief and together they become a living faith.

James writes that when works do not follow our faith, then it is a dead faith.⁵ If your brother is cold and hungry, he tells us, then give him clothes and food. Don't just say, 'I hope you find clothes and food.' Make sure you do your part to get him some.⁶ It is meaningless to extend well-wishes to a brother if your actions do not follow suit.

Because we are human, our actions do not always follow our good intentions. We can identify what is good and aim at it, but we fall short. Through human weakness our faith will never be perfectly coherent. But this disconnect between our intentions and our actions is different from the incoherence of alternate belief systems.

People who claim to live in pursuit of power or pleasure deviate from their beliefs, because some decidedly human things—such as falling in love—cannot be explained by these motivations. One man told me that his reason for going to work was to make as much money as possible. Sometime later, even though the money remained good, he threatened to quit his job because his ego was wounded. By my observation, his actions rendered his belief incoherent. When this happens, it is evident that humans are more complex than they admit and their own stated beliefs fail to explain this complexity. That is why not all beliefs can be called faiths. They break down at some point and are revealed as untrue.

James exhorts a coherent faith like Abraham’s, where belief is testified by action. We seek this coherence when we “measure all (our) thoughts, words and actions by the rule of the divine Word.”⁷ In spite of our frequent failures, the Bible is the true measure of coherence.

Two kinds of reasoning

The reason man can presume to measure himself by God’s Word is because Scripture carries a certain logic. I think this is something that is crucial to understand. The secular world wants us to believe that faith and religion are backwards, illogical, and outdated; and too often we concede them this point because we look at it through their eyes. We can see that faith in God is counter-intuitive.

But the secular world uses human reasoning and we do not. Human reasoning is what I wrote earlier, about rationalizing our base desires. If I want to live a sensual life, (who doesn’t) I can decide that the pursuit of pleasure should be my life’s purpose. I go to work to earn money to spend on leisure, recreation, and good food. Because I see everyone around me going through basically the same motions, I generalize my motivations to include everyone around me. I can then use this as justification to continue doing just as I please.

Children are great at human reasoning. If they see a new lunch kit that they want, they will say they “need” it, and provide all kinds of whimsical reasons why. Con men justify their cons by saying their targets were asking for it by being so gullible. One man I talked to enjoys fighting, so he works as a bouncer and justifies it as “helping” or “protecting” people.

The above examples of human reasoning are essentially self serving and self centered. They focus on the gratification of my desires even if it negatively impacts someone else. Christian faith rejects this kind of reasoning. We reason using the Word of God and a crucified Christ. The cross is a symbol of personal sacrifice for the greater good. It takes the focus off of me. It is an inversion of human reasoning, where everyone can become an object in service of my desires; and turns it into a service of submitting my desires for the good of all.

The fact that human reasoning comes naturally to us does not mean we are incapable of understanding the reasoning of the Bible. Nor does it mean that using our minds to understand Scripture is automatically human reasoning. Without discounting the mystery in the things of God, I want to establish that there is a logic to his Word that makes it possible for the human mind to understand and believe.⁸

How we can understand Abraham’s biggest test

Abraham’s primary test occurred when God told him to leave home again, this time to sacrifice his son Isaac.⁹ Isaac was Abraham’s promised heir, miraculously born to him in his old age when his wife was well past child bearing years. Through Isaac, God had promised to raise up a mighty nation of Abraham’s descendants.¹⁰ They would be like sand on the beach and the stars in the sky.¹¹ But now, illogically, God was telling Abraham to make an offering out of him.

Of course, we know that God doesn’t require Abraham to follow through. He stays Abraham’s hand and provides a ram for the sacrifice instead. The story has a happy ending and Isaac returns home at Abraham’s side. But where is the logic in it?

The Scriptures tell us that Abraham continued to believe that God would fulfill his promise through Isaac, even if it meant raising Isaac from the dead. In fact, Hebrews tells us that by being returned to his father, Isaac was figuratively raised from the dead.¹²

The logic in this story is found in its parallel to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.¹³ It is the story of a father who sacrifices his son and a son who submits to his father. The offering of Isaac is a foreshadowing, or type, of Christ. That is how we understand it and is the reason why we can understand it.

So we can see that even a most illogical story has enough coherence to be understood by us. Without taking too many creative liberties, we can draw some more comparisons between the sacrifice of Isaac and the sacrifice of Christ. Jesus walked with his own father to his own sacrificial death, not without some angst. God the Father was surely not immune to the type of grief that Abraham carried as he accompanied Isaac to his death on Mount Moriah. This imagery adds depth to our understanding of what God the Father and God the Son endured to bring about our salvation.

Believing the contexts of the Bible

I have heard the Bible called the “best instruction manual for life.” This statement is true, but before the Bible becomes an instruction manual I think it needs to be placed in context.

Real Bible scholars talk about a number of contexts of the Bible. One of these is the Ancient Near East, which is the geographic and historic context that most of the Old Testament was written in. Understanding the thinking of the ancient Israelites and their neighbors and contemporaries can be helpful in understanding what the Scriptures mean. Especially if one is studious and interested in this type of thing.

In pointing out the coherence of Abraham’s faith, I relied on the context of Scripture itself. I used verses in from the New Testament books of Hebrews and James to examine what happened in the Old Testament book of Genesis. Some might think that this requires a certain amount of scholarship, but it’s not much when compared to the previous example. I would say it’s pretty attainable.

But there is another context of the Bible that must be accepted by both scholars and non-scholars in order to understand and believe the gospel. This is the context of the human condition; the belief that there is something deeply wrong with us. If we do not believe that we are flawed, then we have no reason to believe that we need the redemption that Christ offers.

Like I said in the introduction, for me this belief began in my feeling of condemnation. These feelings were uncomfortable and I wanted them to go away forever. Unfortunately, this is not realistic. I think that discomfort about our flaws can prevent us from coming to a healthier understanding of what it means to be a sinner. After all, I acknowledged my sin when I repented and became a Christian. Why would I want to spend more time dwelling on that miserable topic? But I believe that a better understanding of our sinfulness can give us added freedom, so I am going to dwell on it a little.

Defining the human condition

Being a sinner does not only mean that I am bad, but that I am incapable of being good.¹⁴ The relationship between goodness and badness is the same as that of light and darkness. Light is something which exists while darkness is the absence of light. I think it is permissible to say that we all have a spark within us that is waiting to be fanned to life. But in order to be acceptable to God, his goodness has to flood to every corner of our heart.

This was not my initial understanding of sin. A mentor of mine once told me that it is our natural inclination to live by the Law. I think that this same nature inclines us to misunderstand our sinfulness by thinking of it as injustice. Children quickly develop the ability to recognize injustice when it occurs. They instinctively grasp “eye for an eye” retaliation—if you hit, me, I’ll hit you back.

These childish quarrels can escalate quickly when the victim of the first attack responds too harshly. If you hit me, what often happens is that I will hit you back, but harder. Which means that the initial aggressor becomes the new victim who now has a grievance to settle.

A child has the ability to discern different levels of injustice that are only incrementally different from each other. They may not be right, but they can tell the difference between a punch and a retaliatory punch plus interest (“he hit me way harder than I hit him.”).

The ability to distinguish between different levels of injustice exemplifies our natural tendency to assess sin as “relative badness”. For example, I would say that theft is worse than lying, adultery is worse than theft, and murder is worse than adultery. So because the worst thing I’ve done is tell lies, then I might claim to be a better person than a thief or murderer; and certainly better than a mass murderer.

But being a sinner is not determined by my badness, relative or otherwise. It is determined by my lack of goodness relative to God.¹⁵ This understanding of sin is important because it puts us on an equal plane with all humanity. The lies I have told do not separate me from God any further than the criminal offenses of someone else. We both need God’s forgiveness in equal measure.

Although clarifying our relationship to other sinners can hopefully remove a barrier to outreach, it can also be a tough pill to swallow. There will always be someone whom we struggle to see as our equal, just like the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like other men.¹⁶ We would like to think it possible to move ourselves closer to God by performing good deeds. It is difficult for us to accept that good deeds do not move us closer to God. It is perhaps just as difficult as believing that Christ’s blood washes away our bad deeds.

If we can believe the Bible’s portrayal of our sinfulness, then understanding the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice becomes more settled. Whether we feel bad or good, we know that the only goodness that benefits us is that of Jesus Christ. By his death and resurrection, he serves as a conduit for God’s righteousness to flow into us, washing away the sin and flooding out the darkness that separates us from our heavenly Father. We only need to believe in Christ and he will cleanse our hearts as the sanctified dwelling place of God.

It is against the backdrop of God’s magnificent grace for sinners that the Bible becomes the best instruction manual for life. Jesus became one of us in order to overcome the gulf of sin that separates us from God. This is the biggest thing that has ever happened to humanity. It is in recognition of this that we can keep the commandments and not find them grievous. By being obedient to God’s commands we imitate Christ’s perfect example and testify where our allegiance lies. This is a living faith.

Conclusion

I said in the introduction that faith was the missing ingredient in my early Christian experience. The version of faith I outlined might seem dry or boring or too austere. Anyone who knows me, knows that I fall far from measuring up to what I wrote here. (Or else you’re just thinking I’m even weirder than you first realized.) But thinking about faith in this manner has really helped me out. It has lent stability to my life and given me confidence that my redemption is secure, regardless of how I might feel about it in the moment.

Life is full of uncertainties, but when I can depend with certainty on the promises found in the Word, I am properly equipped to face them. The things I know about God from the Bible are just the ballast I need to sail safely through the storm of unknowns.

When I lived my life by seeking a certain emotional state, I seldom found it. I was looking for a Christian experience that returned a very narrow set of positive emotions. But when I am looking to grow in faith, then I am free to experience whatever emotions come my way. The misery and shame still catches me at times, but when I am struck again by the magnitude of what Christ has done for me, everything else pales in comparison. In the end, my Christian life is richer in emotional experience than when I pursued the good feelings themselves.

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1. Hebrews 11:6

2. An astute proofreader pointed out that this was not always the case. Only in the last 500 +/- years have Christians had God’s written Word readily accessible. Prior to that, Christians would have depended more on oral and other traditions for the dissemination of God’s Word.

3. James 2:17, 22, Hebrews 11:1

4. Hebrews 11:8

5. James 2:17

6. Paraphrase of James 2:14 - 16

7. Menno Simon, The Complete Works of Menno Simon, 2nd ed. (1871; repr., Aylmer, Ontario and Lagrange, Indiana: Pathway Publishers, 1983), 447.

8. If this were not true, then Jeremiah 9:24 would be little more than a taunt.

9. James 2:21

10. Hebrews 11:17 - 18

11. Hebrews 11:12

12. Hebrews 11:19

13. Menno Simon, The Complete Works of Menno Simon, 2nd ed. (1871; repr., Aylmer, Ontario and Lagrange, Indiana: Pathway Publishers, 1983), 429.

14. Romans 3:10 - 12

15. Romans 3:23

16. Luke 18:11