Thursday, July 23, 2015

Don’t Just Have Faith

Here is another article I wrote for the local paper, the Oakland Independent.

A few years ago, I watched a good movie, “The Bucket List,” about two older men who were dying of cancer who team up to accomplish their bucket list items before they die. Edward, played by Jack Nicholson, is a rich, skeptical loner, while Carter, played by Morgan Freeman, is a middle-class family man who believes in God. At one point they have a conversation about God, and Edwards declares that he just cannot believe, while Carter declares that you have to have faith.

Unfortunately, while this is a touching scene, it expresses a view of faith that is common today, but that is not the same type of faith that is expressed in the Bible. Today, faith is often defined as believing something without evidence or sometimes in spite of the evidence, which is why the skeptics like Edward have trouble believing. This kind of blind faith is more about the sincerity of the person believing then it is about the trustworthiness of God. This kind of faith does not lead you in any direction because it is primarily about the feelings of the individual, rather than whether the person or object can be trusted. Therefore, people of many different religions can have this kind of faith, but believe in contradictory things. So if you “just have faith” you might end up believing something completely different than your neighbor who “just has faith” in something else.

In the Bible faith is not defined as believing without evidence, rather faith is about trusting God in the future because He has proven himself trustworthy in the past. John tells us he wrote to give us the details of the life of Jesus so that we might believe or have faith (John 20:30-31). Rather than a blind leap of faith, he gives us lots of details about  Jesus so that we might come to the same conclusion to which he came, namely that Jesus is Savior and Lord and is therefore worthy of our trust.

Therefore, Christian faith is not about a blind leap into the dark, but rather it is a leap into the arms of God who has proven Himself time and again. My encouragement to you is not to just have faith in general, rather spend time studying the scriptures and the world to see that God is worthy of your trust.  A faith that is grounded on solid evidence is the kind of faith that will stand up even in the hard times.

Over the next couple of articles, I will share some of the reasons that I have faith in Jesus, and it is this type of faith that has carried me through times of great doubt and times of great sorrow. He is faithful and will carry you too if you have faith in Him.

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