Faith is a word that is deeply misunderstood. Some people define “faith” as believing the impossible. People of “faith” believe that which is contrary to evidence. People of “faith” ignore reality. I had one friend tell me that with all the scientific discoveries it takes all the faith he can muster to believe Genesis chapter 1.
In a letter to the editor in the North County Times one writer wrote this about faith: “I met a likable fellow at a tennis court in San Marcos last year and discovered that he was a creationist. I said the fossil record shows sequentially changing species through time. He said biologists, geologists and paleontologists are wrong. I asked how Noah's flood could have occurred around 2,250 B.C. without the Egyptians noticing, since their civilization was over 1,000 years old by then. He said historians and archaeologists are wrong. I told him the world must be over 6,000 years old because some processes on Earth took millions of years to occur. He said chemists and geophysicists are wrong. I told him that light from some galaxies has taken millions of years to reach us. He said physicists and astronomers are wrong. So, I asked: With nearly all of science being so thoroughly wrong on nearly everything, who isn't wrong? The answer was himself and those who agreed with his literal interpretation of the Bible. Welcome to the alternate reality of creationism's faith-based science.”
This man in the article and others suggest that it is not preferable to search for evidence to support your faith. Faith is not the kind of thing that has anything to do with facts, they say. If we have evidence to prove what we believe, then that takes away from real faith.
What we've done is made a virtue out of believing against the evidence. I’ve been told that my search for evidence to support my faith destroys the beauty of faith. This type of thinking goes against what the Bible teaches.
Think about it for a moment. Talbot philosophy professor, J.P. Moreland has suggested that if this is really the Christian view of faith, the best thing that could happen to Christianity is for the bones of Jesus to be discovered. Finding His bones would prove He didn't rise from the dead. When Christians continue to believe that He did, then, they would be demonstrating the strongest of all faith, believing something that all the evidence proved was false; they would be “Believing the unbelievable.”
This is silly. We have faith in the resurrection because we have evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. If we're encouraged to believe because of the evidence for the resurrection, then that proves this other view of faith is false. It may be the view Christians hold in many cases, but it is not the view of the Bible; it is not the view of Christianity.
Biblical faith doesn’t believe against the evidence; instead, faith is a kind of knowing that results in action. That's why the Christian faith cares about the evidence; for the Biblical Christian, the facts matter.
