http://anchor.tfionline.com/post/rational-faith/
As an impressionable college freshman sitting in my first class of Western literature, I watched my favorite professor, Mrs. Chang, reading the story of Abraham and Isaac. The uniqueness of the Genesis story, with its typically bare Jewish narrative that couches profound stories like the one about the God who gives a childless couple a son, commands the father to murder his son a few years later, and then changes His mind as the deed is about to be done, confused my fellow freshmen. It was just not what most of us fantasize about when we think of that lovely word mythology, for that was what my professor said those stories were. A myth.
She looked up from the weighty volume, smiled sympathetically at her baffled students and said, “That is why I am not a Christian. The God of the Hebrew Bible does not make sense to me. Faith is irrational.”
“And please,” she continued, “if there are any Christians in this class, don’t try to argue with me. We are studying literature, not religion.” I submissively held my burning tongue.
According to her, faith, the cornerstone of my life from the time I knew how to sing “Jesus Loves Me” with childish gusto, was a ridiculous notion too bizarre to bother trying to understand. Faith got you into strange predicaments with a fallible and erratic God who just puts you through torturous experiments for his own satisfaction. Certainly not for brilliant scholars like herself to believe in.
It wasn’t the first time that I had heard a comment like that. From an early age, regular experience in personal evangelism made me grow accustomed to the incredulous stares and guffaws of those who I was trying to convince to accept the message of salvation. Now, when the person who I admired so much said the same thing, it set off a pile of questions in my mind: Why is faith so hard to grasp? If it is so important to our eternal destinies and our present happiness, why should it be so strange, even repulsive? Why didn’t God make the Bible a little less cryptic and more like those self-help articles on the Internet that break down every important value of living well to three main points, complete with clear summaries and highlights?
Worse yet, her words rang uncomfortably true with my own spiritual experience. So many times the ways of God seemed beyond reason and led to paths of pain and struggle. Sometimes the purpose behind the uncertainty would become clear, but many other times I would come through an ordeal with unanswered questions. Was it worth holding on to a faith that so many people said was nonsense and that actually added uncertainty to my life?
Suddenly, to my own surprise, a quote I had read as a high school student in my biology textbook popped into my head:
“If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t.”1
The brain was beyond understanding not because it was a botched project that wasn’t worth our attention; it was simply more marvelous, more astoundingly complex, than our human minds were capable of analyzing and processing. The fact that humans couldn’t understand the brain was not a reason for Watson to give up on biology and declare science a bunch of baloney; rather, those unsolved mysteries of the human mind made it all the more fascinating to him, and made it worth devoting his life to discovering its secrets.
Lyall Watson’s calm acceptance of the unsolvable complexity of the human brain got me thinking about the upsides of believing in a faith that I cannot always explain to the satisfaction of nonbelievers. Abraham could trust God to fulfill His promise of multiplying Abraham’s seed because he knew and loved the God that was behind the outrageous command. When I face issues in my relationship with God and I just can’t accept the way God seems to be leading, the only thing that will give me the strength to go through with what I am being asked is the love that holds us—God and humanity—together. Love triumphs where reason and logic fail to sustain. From this perspective, obedience out of love is the right thing to do, and thus the rational thing.
Furthermore, if I could find a way to explain away every incident in the Bible and could attach documents of proof to every one of Christianity’s spiritual claims, there would not be any reason to rely on God’s strength and invest in coming to know Him deeply and to involve Him in every part of my life. I would have all the answers and there would be no place for God. It is not that I have to content myself with groping in the dark forever. Jesus has the answers, so the questions keep me going back to Jesus at every step of my Christian walk, seeking Him and yearning for His spirit. Every time I come up against something I don’t have an easy answer for, I am reminded of the imperfection inherent in my human existence and my need for salvation.
I came to understand that I could hang on to my faith with Christ-empowered confidence because the difficulty of having faith actually testifies to its value. There is no need for faith if every aspect of a value system is mechanical, symmetrical, and provable through the scientific method. Such a value system would certainly be rational, but it would be limited to the rationality of finite human minds. Christianity does not claim to be able to present believers with succinct values and doctrines that fit neatly into preconceived ideas. Rather, it offers entry to a world beyond what I currently consider rational. As theologian Peter Kreeft says, “Only in a world where faith is difficult can faith exist.” If faith in God was made easy by being changed to appeal to our five senses, it would not be able to lead us to the One whose ways are higher than our ways.2
1 Attributed to Lyall Watson.
2 Isaiah 55:8: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment