Faith & Wishing
I don’t like the word “faith.”
It’s not that faith isn’t valuable. True biblical faith is essential for salvation. But faith is often deeply misunderstood in a way that hurts Christianity and harms Christians.
Some think that having a level of certainty about the truth of Christianity makes “belief” unnecessary or irrelevant. That kind of knowledge undermines genuine faith and offends God.
The reasoning goes something like this. We all know God wants us to have faith. In fact, without faith, it’s impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6). However, gathering evidence for God and Christianity leaves little room for faith. After all, how can one have faith in something he knows is true? Faith, then, is opposed to knowledge. Therefore, apologetics undermines the faith project and thus displeases the Lord.
On this view, faith is believing the unbelievable, clinging to your convictions when all the evidence is against you. Faith is a “leap,” a blind, desperate lunge in the darkness. When doubts or troubles beset us we’re told to “just have faith,” as if we could squeeze out spiritual hope by intense acts of sheer will.
This view of faith reduces Christian conviction to religious wishful thinking. We can hope, but we can never know.
But this will never work. Someone once said, “The heart cannot believe that which the mind rejects.” If you are not confident the message of Scripture is actually true, you can’t believe it even if you tried.
The “I just take Christianity on faith” attitude can’t be the right approach. It leaves the Bible without defense, yet Peter directs us to make a defense for the hope that is in us. (1 Peter 3:15)
Also, the biblical word for faith, pistis, doesn’t mean wishing. It means active trust. And trust cannot be conjured up or manufactured. It must be earned. You can’t exercise the kind of faith the Bible has in mind unless you’re reasonably sure that some particular things are true.
In fact, I suggest you completely ban the phrase “leap of faith” from your vocabulary. Biblical faith is based on knowledge, not wishing or blind leaps. Knowledge builds confidence and confidence leads to trust. The kind of faith God is interested in is not wishing. It’s trust based on knowing, a sure confidence grounded in evidence.
The following biblical examples suffice to make my point.
Blood, Boils, Frogs, and Flies
Israel’s exodus from Egypt was depicted in a clever animated film called “The Prince of Egypt.” After seeing the movie, my wife and I spent time reading the original account in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Though I’d read this passage a number of times, something jumped out at me I hadn’t seen before, a phrase God kept repeating over and over.
Reading the encounter with God at the burning bush, we sense Moses’ reluctance to be God’s deliverer. And it’s understandable. Why would Pharaoh, the most powerful leader in the world, submit to a renegade? Why would two million Hebrew slaves follow a murderer and a defector?
“What if they won’t believe me, or listen to me?” Moses demurred. “What if they say, ‘The Lord hasn’t appeared to you’?”
What God didn’t say in response is as important as what He did say. He didn’t say, “Tell Pharaoh he’s just going to have to trust you on this one. Tell the Hebrews they’ve got to have faith.”
Instead God asked, “What’s that in your hand?”
“A staff,” Moses answered.
“Throw it on the ground.”
So he threw it down, and it became a serpent.
“Stretch out your hand,” the Lord said. “Grab it by the tail.”
Reluctantly, Moses did as he was told. When he grabbed the snake, it became a staff again.
“Do this,” God said, “and then they’ll believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, has appeared to you.”
More signs followed that got the people’s attention: the river of blood and frogs covering the land; the gnats, flies, and locusts; the boils and the pestilence; the hail, the darkness, and finally the angel of death. All for one purpose: “That they might know there is a God in Israel.” This phrase is repeated no less than ten times throughout the account. (Cf., Exodus 6:7, 7:5, 7:17, 8:10, 8:22, 9:14, 9:29, 10:2, 14:4, and 14:18)
What was the result? “And when Israel saw the great power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in His servant Moses” (Exodus 14:31).
Note the pattern: a powerful evidence (miracles, in this case), giving the people knowledge of God, in Whom they then placed their faith. Knowledge –some level of certainty—went before belief in each of these cases.
God didn’t ask Pharaoh, the Hebrews, or even Moses for mindless faith, blind leaps, or wishful thinking. He demonstrated His power, giving them good reason to believe, resulting in obedience. First, Pharaoh and the Hebrews were given good reason to know. This then grounded their investment of faith (active trust) in God. (Of course, Pharaoh’s “faith” was not expressed in humble surrender leading to salvation, but in obedience under compulsion. The point is, he was compelled to act based on the unmistakable evidence of God’s power.)
In the animated feature, Miriam sings a song of deliverance which includes the refrain, “There can be miracles when you believe.” But the reality was just the opposite. Miracles didn’t follow belief; they preceded it. Acts of power led to knowledge, which then allowed faith to flourish.
Taking the Easy Way Out?
Fast forward to the New Testament and you’ll find the same pattern in the life of Christ.
In Mark 2, we encounter Jesus speaking to a group gathered in a home in Capernaum. A crowd blocks the front door, keeping a paralytic—being carried by his four friends—from gaining an audience with the Healer. The only way in is from above, so they dig through the earthen roof and lower the deformed man down on a pallet.
Jesus is impressed. Seeing their faith He says to the paralytic, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”
His words offend the scribes, though, who grumble among themselves at such an audacious claim. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” they whisper.
Jesus, aware of their complaint, puts a question to them. “Which is easier to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or ‘Arise, take up your pallet and walk’?”
How would you respond? If you were in Jesus’ position, would it be easier for you to claim to forgive sins or claim to heal paralysis? The correct answer is it’s always easier to boast about something no one can check up on than to claim to have supernatural powers and be put to the test.
Jesus knew it looked like He was taking the easy way out, until His next remark: “But in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—He then turned to the paralytic—”I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home.” Then, in the sight of everyone, the paralytic got up and got out.
Jesus gives us the same lesson we find in Exodus. He proves something that can’t be seen—the forgiveness of sins—with evidence that can be seen—a dramatic healing. Jesus heals “in order that you may know.” Once again, the concrete evidence allows the doubters to know the truth so they can then trust in the forgiveness Christ could give.
The Apostle Peter
On to the book of Acts and Peter’s dramatic sermon on Pentecost. The crowd is both amazed and bewildered at the manifestations of the Spirit they see with their own eyes.
Peter takes his stand before the throng. It isn’t intoxication they witness , he tells them, but inspiration, prophecy being fulfilled in their midst by the hand of God. He recounts that Jesus—even though attested to by miracles, signs, and wonders—had been murdered at the hands of godless men. Death couldn’t hold Him in the grave, though. He has risen. Not only did King David himself foretell such a thing; Peter and the rest of the disciples had witnessed the risen Christ themselves. The promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, was now being poured out in a way that Peter’s entire audience could see and hear.
He closes with a statement tailor-made for all those who think that certainty somehow diminishes genuine faith: “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” (Acts 2:36)
When the crowd hears the evidence—the miracles, the fulfilled prophecy, the witnesses of the resurrection, the powerful manifestations of the Spirit in their midst—the people are pierced to the heart. They are convinced of their error, they know the truth, and thousands believe, putting their trust in the Savior.
Hear, See, Handle, Believe
The Beloved Disciple brings it all together for us in 1 John. He opens his letter with the evidence of his own eyewitness encounter with Christ. Notice how many senses he appeals to:
What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the Word of Life—and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also….
Then he closes his letter like this:
by Greg KouklAnd the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:11-13)
To John, faith wasn’t a blind leap. It wasn’t wishing on a star. It was grounded in evidence that led to knowledge. It was certain.
The record is clear from the Old Testament, to the Gospels, from the very beginnings of the early church, to the epistles of the apostles: Biblical faith isn’t wishing, it’s confidence. It’s not denying reality, but discovering reality. It’s a sense of certainty grounded in evidence that Christianity is true—not just “true for me,” but actually, fully, and completely true.
Spiritual growth involves increasing our knowledge and our certainty of God. So there are two things here: first knowledge, and second confidence in what we know.
How do we increase confidence? Wish harder? Hope against hope? Stop our ears to the sounds of the critics without, and ignore the doubts of the agnostic within? This will never work, because confidence cannot be fabricated. It must be earned. As you gather substantiating evidence, your confidence grows automatically and your faith is deepened.
Faith is not about wishing, but about confidence, and the facts make the difference. You get a hold of the facts, you study, you learn—even a little—and you’ll realize you’re not just wishing on a star about eternal things. You’ll realize Christianity is really true.
And that changes everything.
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