In my last post, I defined faith, correctly, as trust based on adequate evidence, contrasting it with our secular, postmodern culture’s definition as what you need when there isn’t enough evidence. Big difference. In this post I will take a brief look at how we experience faith and doubt in daily life, and in our relationship with God. While the objects are different, the nature of the thing remains the same. Religious “faith” and everyday “faith” are the same because absolute certainty doesn’t exist, and we must act, or not, based evidence presented to us.
A good example comes from a conversation I had with my daughter recently about an opportunity to advance her career. I think she’s a vivacious genius who can do anything (after all she’s my daughter!), but like most normal people she experiences doubt about her abilities and experience. Life is full of situations where we must make a decisions.
Since we are finite creatures with limited knowledge, we must always more or less walk by faith, properly defined. At some point we come to the end of what we know or can know, and we have to decide. Unfortunately, given we are not only finite but fallen creatures, we often think we know what we obviously cannot know. Specifically, we can’t know the future, but how many of us live in it, as if we could predict what will happen tomorrow, or next year. As I often tell my kids in teaching them about this concept of faith, I can’t know what’s going to happen in the next 15 seconds, so how in the world can I know what’s going to happen at any time in the future.
So instead of catastrophizing (it shouldn’t surprise us that our duplicitous illusions of omniscience are usually negative, fallen sinners that we are), we look at the facts, at the evidence, and trust. I can only speak of this as a Christian, so our trust is first and foremost in our God and Father, who loves us and sent his son to die for us. We have nothing to fear. Either Romans 8:28 is true, or it is not, that God works all things together for our good, or not. Or is what Jesus says in Matthew 7:11 true or not:
If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
Is there enough evidence for us to believe this, and thus trust it is true? Of course! “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
Where we find ourselves on the Doubt-O-Meter, i.e. how much certainty we have, is a result each person’s unique psychology, upbringing, etc., but it is much more determined by our view God. All of life, whether one believes in God or not, is lived vis-à-vis God. He is the Creator and sustainer of our being, and can’t be escaped. Those who believe he is untrustworthy will tend toward the doubt end of the spectrum, while those who believe what Scripture says about his character will tend toward the trust end. As I’ve learned throughout my life, and taught my kids, the latter is a much more pleasant, and God honoring, way to live.
I can’t leave the concepts of doubt and certainty without discussing 17th Century French philosopher René Descartes. Stay tuned for my next post when I explore how his thoughts infected Western epistemology, and why he made knowing so problematic.
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