Faith

Earlier this year, a documentary was released called "The Lost Tomb of Jesus". It purported that an archeology team had recently found a tomb that had a man named Jesus in it. If this was the Jesus of the Bible this would have been the greatest discovery in the history of the Western world. Unfortunately it came up well short as every well-credentialed archeologist said it was nothing of the sort. Jesus was a common name and the tomb did not fit where Jesus would have been buried or the income level of Jesus' family. What shocked me however was that the documentary makers made a revealing and stunning comment to soften the public blow on Christianity - they said that the discovery shouldn't hurt Christianity at all. I was screaming in my head, "What?! How do you get that idea?"

The only possible way you can make sense of such a comment is to think one of three things: Jesus' resurrection was spiritual, Christianity is not about facts but faith, or he had no idea that Jesus' death and ressurection is the backbone of Christianity. I would guess that they would not be so niave to believe the last one. It is possible that they are familiar with the debate on Christ's ressurection being spiritual or bodily. But I would guess it was the middle one because that is a common view in today's world, especially the academic world.

But this view of Christianity is become a "Christian" mindset as well. As christians, especially in the west, have begun to lose their identity in the intellectual realm, they have not fought this but actually are now encouraging it. There is a movement happening in the evangelical crowd. It's moving to emotionalism, cliche phrases that have no honesty left in them, and even a lite form of fideism. The reason why is because the Christian worldview, throughout most of the 20th century, had no true, cogent answer to the growing western world. As It lost its indentity in as compitent, reasonable worldview, it drifted into what it was comfortable with. The result is a group that are copycats to culture, mindless in worship, and ignorant in thought. Anyone who has grown up in an evangelical church has heard the verses "God's ways are greater than my ways" and "how unsearchable are your ways oh God" taken out of context at least once. We have come to the conclusion that faith equals not asking questions and not trying to work things out. I wonder what they would do when they realized that Job, Habakuk, Abraham, and the disciples all asked questions.

Christianity has become a religion that is based on leaps in the dark and not truth. These "leap in the dark" moments are called faithful moments. Is this faith?

When Jesus coming into a town, some servants of a Roman centurion came to him and asked him to heal their masters greatest servant from a deathy sickness. Jesus agreed to come the centurion's house. As he came closer to the house, the centurion sent out his servants again and the servants said that their master did not need Jesus to come out of his way for him but that Jesus just needed to say the word and he would be confident in the healing of his servant - for has the centurion had authority to tell people to do things so did Jesus have authority to do what is in his power to do. Jesus said that he had not found such faith in anyone else he had encountered and that the centurion's servant has been healed. What kind of faith did this man have in Jesus? It was definitely not a leap in the dark.

The centurion obviously knew of Jesus and his power. He based his belief on what was true. He heard the testimony of Jesus' miracles and understood Jesus' authority. This is the very opposite many see Christianity today. Many people see Christianity in the light of: their faith makes it true for them. However, this is not how the Bible sees faith. The Bible sees it this way: truth makes their faith reasonable. Truth precedes faith, not the other way around. The centurion heard of Jesus and knew of his power, and based his faith in Jesus on the evidence given to him.

The word for faith in the new testament is "pistis". This greek word is probably best understood as having trust in something that is reliable. It is the idea of trusting in something that has been well tested. It is not a leap in the dark where you are trusting anything, whether reliable or not. Faith, in the Christian sense, is not this. As the centurion trusted in Jesus and his authority because of knowing of Jesus and his works, so do Christians trust in God. The Christian idea of faith is dependent on truth and evidence. They have yet to find Jesus' dead body and I believe they never will because the evidence does not point to his grave but his ressurection. The evidence for the resurrection is obviously not 100% and that is why faith comes in. But I have faith that Jesus did raise from the dead because the evidence points that direction. Faith is not the absence of thought or reason, it is the trusting in the conclusion that the evidence points to.