Faith and Reason

Perhaps you have heard about the recent advertising campaign for the “no God” option. The slogan, There’s probably is no God: now stop worrying and enjoy your life, has been displayed on public transit in the UK and now Canada. People have taken all kinds of positions on these ads, some welcoming the discussion, some wanting these questions to remain private and personal, and others seeing these messages as hateful or disrespectful. What do you think?

Last Sunday, we began our new series, The God Debate, with the intention of talking about this recent ferment in public theological conversation (a rare event to be sure). We want to respond to the assertions of notable atheists like Richard Dawkins who contend that religion has had far too privileged a position in our culture, and that there is a better, healthier, and more enlightened position: the “no God” option, and all that goes with it. In fact, writers like Dawkins see religion as a delusion, a mistaken and dangerous claim on knowledge. The debate really centers here: what counts as real knowledge? And how can anyone claim to know God?

The Biblical and Christian traditions carry within them the resources to enter such dialogue with profound intellectual depth. One of the best responses to the new atheism from a Christian perspective is Dinesh D’Souza’s best seller What’s So Great About Christianity. I highly recommend it for those who want to go deeper into the questions.

But what about faith? Is faith reasonable? Is faith knowledge? I want to suggest that while faith has its reasons, it is ultimately a way of knowing based on a more personal and engaged stance. Faith is the kind of knowing that comes through encounter and participation. God makes this possible in fact; through Jesus, he has immersed himself in our human story, living it from the inside. The invitation to us is to respond, to participate in the life that Jesus invites us to. One way of seeing Christian baptism is a personal immersion in the life of Jesus to the degree that we begin to know it from the inside. Faith, then, is the kind of knowledge that comes through direct involvement; it is the knowledge of personal participation.

So much of our usual way of thinking about knowledge or truth relates to our Greek intellectual tradition: the Greek word alethia suggests the truth is something that must be uncovered, the reality that lies deeper than appearances. While this is a helpful perspective, for the Greek mind truth had more to do with the world of things versus a world of persons. The Hebrews started their search for knowledge in a different place entirely, beginning as they did with the premise of God (Gen 1:1). So the Hebrew word emet (truth) is more like faithfulness, the quality of a dependable person. For the Hebrews, the possibility of human knowing is grounded in the personal creator-God; truth is grounded in the ultimate Someone we can know.

This means simply that our knowledge of God does not arrive through disengaged analysis, but as we respond to the life he offers. Let me give you a Biblical illustration of this. When Jesus first announced himself to Israel he was baptized by John. John had been prepared in a very special way to recognize Jesus as God’s Messiah, and he said gave witness of this understanding to those who were with him. And while all were intrigued with John’s statements, they did not know what John did, not at first. Their understanding of who Jesus was came through ordinary relational means, through the discovery of shared life.

Because of John’s testimony, two of John’s followers began to follow Jesus, as John 1:38-39 tells us:

Jesus looked around and saw them following. “What do you want?” he asked them.
They replied, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”
“Come and see,” he said.

This is how we know God in Jesus. We enter into the life he offers us and try it out from the inside. “Come and see” is in invitation, an act of generous hospitality. Jesus says to us, “step into my life and find out who I am.” Millions of Jesus-followers have come to know him in precisely this way. They know God from the inside of the relationship.

This coming Sunday, we continue our God Debate series with a message on Religion and Science. We hope that you can join us at 9:29 or 11:11 am.

Bob