What is Faith?
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Now, here’s the thing through the process of questioning, if we look for answers, we can begin to understand the foundation of our belief and understanding our beliefs helps to build us up in confidence about those beliefs. What it does is – Seeking answers to our doubts, seeking answers to questions that we may have, it roots out false beliefs and it alleviates your doubt. And it can allow you to trust God with more of your life. Right, make that step of living in the presence of God. But I got to tell you, it’s not that tiny, it’s not that tidy, it’s not that neat and tidy. Like, sometimes you’ll never find an answer to some of your doubts. So, what are you going to do? Right? What are you going to do? Well, Dallas Willard, he recently passed away, he’s a Christian philosopher at USC. He says this, “We live in and age which is considered a virtue to disbelieve and a vice to believe.” We become so radically skeptical; we think the intelligent person is one who constantly questions everything. We think that’s intelligence. Willard reminds us you can be as dumb as a cabbage and still ask why. I don’t really think a cabbage can ask why. It’s the answer for morphism.
Anyway, um so, Willard declares, that here’s how you know you’re okay, right? What am I going to do if I have doubt? If I’m a skeptic, like a lot of people like to say. Willard says that, “Not only should you be skeptical of your beliefs and believe in your skepticism. But you should also believe your beliefs and be skeptical of your skepticism.” That’s how you know you’re doing okay, right? Balance, don’t let the pendulum swing. Be skeptical of your skepticism, as well.
Alright so, we looked at answering doubt. Building confidence, I am going to firehose you a bit because of needing to get through the material. So, I know you’re ready for it, aren’t you? I know you’re ready for it, aren’t you? Wow, alright, building confidence, so what’s tearing down confidence and belief in God? Um, current popular atheists and atheist organizations. Some of the most vocal people, who have the largest platforms of influence in our society are saying that Christianity is not and intellectually credible belief whatsoever. I’m going to introduce you to a few of them, there they are. Um, the first one, the old one, oldest one is Mark Twain. Who says, “Faith is believing what you know aint so.” And that little phrase of his is being revived by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. So, you might be driving down the highway and see a billboard with that on it.
To his right, is Bill Mahar, who’s a political comedian and he says – Uh, he said on a show, The View, that “faith is a lack of critical thinking”. There you go, there’s a definition for you, faith is a lack of critical thinking. Richard Dawkins, down here in the corner on the left, said, “Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakeable truths.” – Untested, that means you can’t verify it, right? Untested belief into unshakeable truth, how? Through the power of institutions and through the passage of time. It’s a power play, that’s all it is. There’s nothing verifiable there. But then, there’s Sam Harris who comes in with his eloquence. He’s not as eloquent as Christopher Hitchins but listen to what he has to say. “Surely there must come a time, when we will acknowledge the obvious. Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings.” I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds nice, right, for an atheist. Ignorance with wings, alright.
But not only influential people like that, our television shows, our movies and our media are presenting a largely secularized view of the world, of society in general. Including the view that the educationally elite are largely non-religious, think The Big Bang Theory, right? Sheldon Cooper? The educationally elite are largely non-religious, and then think about his mom. The uneducated are largely evangelical Christians. She’s a Texan, of course she is, right? Told you, Mary Jo, Texas, Baptist.
Alright so, this is influencing us. What else is influencing us? Other Christians, right? Current Christian influences, there are Christians who lack training and interaction with philosophy and worldviews. And they leave us and our culture with an inability to challenge the reigning naturalistic epistemology, that’s in science. We don’t know how to challenge the current scientific naturalism of the day. We don’t notice there’s a philosophy of science. Where are you getting your philosophy from, because you can’t throw philosophy into a lab experiment, and look at it, right? We don’t even know how to challenge science in our day. Because of other Christians who don’t take these philosophies and worldviews seriously and learn them.
There are Christians who are uncertain of how to integrate rationality and trusting God, they compartmentalize it. Faith is over here in my churchiness, for my church stuff, when I go to camps that are churchy. And then there is life, this is where my facts are. This is day to day living. This is where the realm of science and facts are and everyday stuff that I consider – Now, here’s my religion over here, subjective to me and what I believe. We don’t know how to integrate that, we bought into that split, okay? And hopefully throughout these next two weeks you’re going to bring those back together. That’s why this camp exists. And then we have Christians who just reject personal accountability for thoughtful engagement. And that’s when my guy has his ears plugged. They just reject it. “I don’t need that, I got Jesus, I’m safe, done.” Right? This is influencing our culture.
Okay, it’s influencing Christians in our culture, and they don’t know how to engage with things that they hear, tearing down their faith. So, they can end up thinking, they can slip into thinking that their beliefs are unfounded or irrational because of cultural influences. Especially if we have no means to combat these ideas that are contrary. You can lose confidence in your own beliefs, not because of the good arguments, but because of a lack of attention to the influence on your mind. As theologian J. Grisham Machen said, “If you doubt God exists, you cannot reasonably trust him.” Right, so you can’t live the Christian life. You’re harboring doubt that he even exists. You can’t get started with the trust. You’re not going to trust something that doesn’t exist, right? That’s silly, that’s silly. And what Machen said about this further is this quote, “False ideas are the greatest obstacle to the Gospel.” Why is it, people can outright reject the Gospel, because they hold to false ideologies that science is the only way to know truth. And he says, “Even if you preach, even if you preach hard, you may only win a straggler here or there. If you allow the whole collective thought of a nation or a world to be controlled by ideas which prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.” What does he say to do under such circumstances, “God desires us to do, Is to destroy the obstacle at its root”. I believe he’s getting that from 2 Corinthians 10:5. Paul making a case for defending his own ministry, but he says, we – I’ll quote it, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. And take every thought captive to obey Christ.” And this is so important now, because that harmless delusion is no longer a harmless delusion.
Dawkins, if you go to his blog, Richard Dawkins blog and you type in the search bar, child abuse. You’ll see a whole post on how religion has changed child abuse. It’s a harmful delusion now, right? Sixty, seventy years later, it’s become a harmful delusion. That’s what you’re fighting against, people think it’s harmful. Not just, “Well that’s nice, you silly little Christian.” So, you end up playing the role of having to embolden people, empower them to stand up on these attacks with your work in knowing what you believe and why you believe it, apologetics, offering a defense. We need a strategy to combat untruths, to destroy these objectively false statements at its root, which is false beliefs. Apologetics serves as a confidence builder for belief in God. Through developing a rigorous Christian thought life.
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