"Faith is _________ ."
How would you complete the sentence? Faith has been a hard thing for me to define, and even more difficult to learn to live by. At different times of my life I would have completed the sentence in different ways.
Before I became a Christian I might have said: "Faith is believing in something (like a god or religion) because you want to, regardless of whether there is evidence that it is trustworthy or not."
Though I did not really understand this verse, early in my Christian life I might have used the Bible verse Hebrews 11:1 to fill in the sentence: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
At another point in my Christian life a good Christian friend shared the following with me, and the concept of faith began to make more sense: "Faith is taking God at His word."
"Faith is taking God at His word" was helpful, but I was still bothered and confused by the issue of evidence when it came to choosing to live by faith. An engineering professor at a Christian college addresses the issue in his article, "What Is Faith?". He writes that he and his class discuss two possible definitions of faith, and he asks which one is the Biblical concept of faith:
"Faith (number one) is 'trusting in something in spite of the evidence against it'; and
Faith (number two) is 'trusting in something because of the evidence for it'.
At this point I tell the class that these are both valid definitions of faith in our society, and both are widely used; but they obviously have different (in fact almost opposite) meanings - so I ask them for a vote as to which is the 'faith' referred to in the Bible."
I think herein lay my struggle. My perception of faith when I was younger was that faith was just a blind leap in the dark and that it was trusting in something in spite of the evidence against it. Yet, in my hunger to know truth and to live by truth I did not have peace to trust in something that had no evidence for its veracity. Moreover, I could not figure out how to make wise decisions based on the kind of faith that lacked reason. I wanted to be willing to "take God at His word", but I still hungered for evidence that His word was true and that He was trustworthy to believe.
My pastor puts it this way: Biblical faith is not a "hope" with nothing to undergird it. We begin with the evidence (like creation) and see that it is reasonable to believe there is a God. Then we believe that He is Who He reveals Himself to be and trust in Him. It is like looking at a chair. The evidence is there that it will hold me if I sit in it. (looks and feels like a chair) With that evidence then I place my weight on the chair trusting in it alone to hold me. That is faith. Likewise the evidence is that that switch on the wall will make the light come on. It is faith based upon the evidence that leads me to turn on the switch."
In late high school and much of college I considered the evidence regarding creation, the historical accuracy of the Bible's documents, archaelogical evidences, the testimony of authentic genuine Christians, the conscience, and other apologetic arguments. (Note: Two good sources for these kinds of apologetics issues are Probe Ministries and Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Please note the links to their websites in the "Resources" section on my blog.) I saw the evidence for the reasonability of God and the trustworthiness of the Bible growing brick by brick, layer by layer. This was tremendously encouraging to me as I began to "take God at His word" and experienced the work of God in my life.
But because of scrupulosity OCD, I struggled through much of my Christian life to make decisions based on reasonable evidence. The scrupulous, doubting, questioning part of me wanted 100% complete evidence with no questions remaining unanswered before I made a decision. Consequently, I got stuck for a long time focusing on questions rather than reasonably responding to the good evidence that had already mounted for the veracity of God's word. I finally learned to make choices by moving forward based on good evidence. And what joy I have experienced as God has consistently proven Himself to be trustworthy (faithful!) when I have taken Him at His word. My trust in Him (my faith!) has grown as a result.
