Visible things

Having a rational mind requires us to put faith in things outside of ourselves every day:

We have faith that our new car was put together correctly so it will be a dependable mode of travel to work every day, that the airline pilot had sufficient training in air travel to safely land the plane, that the grocery store will be stocked with bread and milk when we walk in their doors to buy food.

We have no choice but to live by our “safe” presumptions based on previous experiences with those who provide goods and services.

But what about things that go beyond our own senses?

Invisible things

What do we do when we are asked to put our faith in something less trivial or common…like God for instance?

A “theist” is someone who believes the existence of a higher power(s) that goes beyond the things of this world.

But how can someone do this?

Isn’t it primitive, childish, backward or otherwise, blind to put our faith into something we cannot see or experience with our senses?

How can people in today’s modernized, scientific and enlightened world still have faith in transcendent beings?

And how do we distinguish fake “gods” from the one, true God?

Instigation-investigation

Well, just like anything else, it demands an investigation.

And faith in a “one true God” rests on evidence.

There is a tremendous amount of evidence for God. In fact, one could argue there is more evidence for the existence of God than there is for the absence of one.

For instance, the probability of our universe being so fine-tuned and organized that it supports life (without any help from us) and is not of a bunch of accidental chaos that self-implodes is: 10^10^123 (first proposed by Nobel Prize winner and physicist, Roger Penrose in his “low-entropy universe” theory). Check it out!

Philosopher and literary genius, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), once famously quipped, “If there were no God there would be no atheists (“The Case for Complexity,” Where All Roads Lead)–meaning, the strong opposition to God is an inadvertent philosophical proof of His very existence.

In every age of mankind, why would we constantly try to disprove something that isn’t there?

St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) asked the pointed question: “What does the mind desire more eagerly than truth?”

The fact that we accept nothing less than the truth shows our natural inclination towards what is true.

This is more evidence that every human being is wired for God, who is Truth.

We can’t experience “truth” with our five senses, yet we still seek it out relentlessly.

But since every person searches for it, Chesterton argued, there must be a truth to find!

“Faithless generation”

Yet despite insurmountable evidence for God, today, mankind is determined to live a life without Him–even a miserable one.

This is offensive to God since He made us out of pure love, and maintains the world and us.

Without God, we would have destroyed ourselves a long time ago, indeed at the very beginning.

Jesus Himself lamented the “faithless generation” that He was born into that would quickly cower and “give in” to the presence of evil forces (Matt 17:17).

Don’t we do the same today?

We are seeing that false compassion feeds the tolerance of evil, and widespread indifference and apathy leads to loss of life.

Jesus also wondered aloud that when He returns at the end of the world, will He find people with faith left on earth (Luke 18:8)?

Visible faith in the invisible

So what does it mean to have faith in God?

The author of the Book of Hebrews defines it as “…the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1, RSVCE)

But does having faith make us more “worthy” to be loved by God?

No, we cannot earn God’s love; faith is a gift, freely given to those who ask for it.

So why ask for it?

Faith in God gives us new eyes to see Him at work in our day-to-day lives and in the lives of others.

It is a giant relief that we cannot, and do not control the world’s affairs anymore than we can control the weather, or determine the day of our death.

It is a solid strength drawn from something greater than ourselves, because we have the humility to acknowledge God’s greatness.

And finally, it is the ability to look beyond this life of trials, trust that “God’s got our back,” and that He won’t let us go.

Things that were once invisible start to become visible. Things that were hidden from us suddenly become clear.

And we begin to see God at work even in our trials, and that a great reward is in store in heaven for those who remain faithful to the end.

Faithless to faithful

So how do we do this? It’s easy to say we have faith, but what does it look like?

St. James tells us that “faith without works is dead” (2:20).

Lived faith is a daily prayer of gratitude in the morning that we lived to see another day.

It is trust in God’s supreme plan of goodness, and that He knows what’s best for us.

And it is the refusal to deny or doubt God’s love, even in the midst of persecution or hardship.

Father in faith

But perhaps Abraham provides the best example of faith of all.

In the Book of Genesis (ch. 22), when God told him to bring his son Isaac for a sacrificial offering (human sacrifice was fairly common in his time) Abraham must have known that sacrificing Isaac contradicted God’s promise to him: namely, that God would make his descendants as numerous as the stars if Abraham obeyed His command to leave his pagan beliefs and homeland behind and embark on a journey to the “land of milk and honey”.

Abraham knew that God’s covenant with him not only included descendants, but that they would come through Isaac, the child he brought into the world through the miraculous conception with his barren wife, Sarah.

Abraham had faith that God would somehow either save Isaac, or bring him back to him, so he obeyed.

That took a lot of faith!

As St. Paul said of Abraham, “Since God had made him a promise, Abraham refused either to deny it or even to doubt it, but drew strength from faith and gave glory to God, convinced that God had power to do what he had promised” (Rom 4:20-21, JB).  

Abraham’s faith in God became the bedrock of his strength to follow-through and obey God’s command.

So why have faith?

Like Abraham, when we nurture our faith, it provides strength for us when the “going gets tough,” and when we face opposition that will inevitably come our way.

And God has charged those who choose to accept Him with a mission–one that will take faith to further God’s will into a world so impoverished of the truth.

“With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one” (Eph 6:16).