Asuperficial faith is avulnerable faith
2
Doubt and the futile search for certainty
Deep within all of us lies a longing for absolute security, to be able to know with total certainty. We feel we should be completely sure of everything we believe.
Yet absolute certainty is actually reserved for a very small class of beliefs. What sorts of beliefs? Well, for example, things that are self-evident or capable of being logically demonstrated by propositions. Christianity doesn’t concern logical propositions or self-evident truths (such as ‘2 + 2 = 4’, or ‘the whole is greater than the part’). Both of these are certainly true. We may be able to know such truths with absolute certainty – but what is their relevance to life? Realizing that ‘the whole is greater than the part’ isn’t going to turn your life inside out! Knowing that two and two equal four isn’t going to tell you anything much about the meaning of life. It won’t excite you. Frankly, the sort of things you can know with absolute certainty are actually not that important.
The things in life that really matter cannot be proven with certainty – whether they are ethical values (such as respect for human life), social attitudes (such as democracy) or religious beliefs (such as Christianity). ‘There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates’ (Alexis de Toqueville). Richard Rorty, probably the greatest American philosopher of the twentieth century, makes this point well, when he points out that
if anyone really believed that the worth of a theory depends on its philosophical grounding, then indeed they would be dubious about physics, or democracy, until relativism in respect to philosophical theories had been overcome. Fortunately, almost nobody believes anything of the sort.
His point? That we can commit ourselves to the great world-views of our time without having to wait for absolute proof – a proof that, by the very nature of things, is never going to happen.
The British nineteenth-century poet Lord Tennyson made this point rather nicely in his poem The Ancient Sage:
For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven; wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.
The really important beliefs in life concern such things as whether there is a God and what he is like, or the mystery of human nature and destiny. These – and a whole host of other important beliefs – have two basic features. In the first place, they are relevant to life. They matter, in that they affect the way in which we think, live, hope and act. In the second place, they cannot be proved (or disproved) with total certainty. By their very nature, they make claims that cannot be proved with certainty. At best, we may hope to know them as probably true. There will always be an element of doubt in any statement that goes beyond the world of logic and self-evident propositions. Christianity shares this situation. It is not unique in this respect: an atheist or Marxist is confronted with precisely the same dilemma, as we will see in the next chapter. Anyone who wants to talk about the meaning of life has to make statements that rest on faith, not absolute certainty. Anyway, God isn’t a proposition – he’s a person!
To believe in God demands an act of faith – as does the decision not to believe in him. Neither is based upon absolute certainty, nor can it be. To accept Jesus demands a leap of faith – but so does the decision to reject him. To accept Christianity demands faith – and so does the decision to reject it. Both rest upon faith, in that nobody can prove with absolute certainty that Jesus is the Son of God, the risen Saviour of humanity – just as nobody can prove with absolute certainty that he is not. The decision, whatever it may be, rests upon faith. There is an element of doubt in each case. Every attitude to Jesus (except the decision not to have any attitude at all!) rests upon faith, not certainty. Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations – a trust in a God who has shown himself worthy of that trust. The New Testament is saturated with God’s promises – promises that offer to change our lives and transform our existence. So can we trust them? How can we know they are reliable? The answer given by the New Testament is simple, yet profound: we can trust Jesus, and we can trust the God whom Jesus reveals. To use a trinitarian framework: God the Father makes promises; God the Son confirms them, in his words and deeds; and the Holy Spirit reassures us of their reliability, and seals those promises within our heart.
These points are reflected in the American writer Sheldon Vanauken’s account of his mental wrestling before his conversion at Oxford. He found himself caught in a dilemma over the role of proof in faith, which many others have experienced:
There is a gap between the probable and the proved. How was I to cross it? If I were to stake my whole life on the risen Christ, I wanted proof. I wanted certainty. I wanted to see him eat a bit of fish. I wanted letters of fire across the sky. I got none of these...It was a question of whether I was to accept him – or reject. My God! There was a gap behind me as well! Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble – but what of the leap to rejection? There might be no certainty that Christ was God – but, by God, there was no certainty that he was not. This was not to be borne. I could not reject Jesus. There was only one thing to do once I had seen the gap behind me. I turned away from it, and flung myself over the gap towards Jesus.
There is indeed a leap of faith involved in Christianity – but it is not an irrational leap into the dark. The Christian experience is that of being caught safely by a loving and living God, whose arms await us as we leap. Martin Luther put this rather well: ‘Faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, untried and unknown goodness of God.’
All outlooks on life, all theories of the meaning of human existence, rest upon faith, in that they cannot be proved with absolute certainty. But this doesn’t mean they’re all equally probable or plausible! Let’s take three theories of the significance of Jesus to illustrate this point:
Although none of these can be proved or disproved with absolute certainty, it will be obvious that they cannot all be taken with the same degree of seriousness!
Let’s be quite clear: Nobody can prove Christianity with total certainty. But that’s not really a problem. The big questions concern the reliability of its historical foundations, its internal consistency, its rationality, its power to convert, and its relevance to human existence. As C. S. Lewis stressed in Mere Christianity, Christianity has exceptionally fine credentials on all counts. Look into them. You can totally commit yourself to the gospel in full confidence, as a powerful, credible and profoundly satisfying answer to the mystery of human existence. Faith is basically the resolve to live our lives on the assumption that certain things are true and trustworthy, in the confident assurance that one day we will know with absolute certainty that this is indeed the case (1 Corinthians 13:12).
A superficial faith is a vulnerable faith
Superficiality is a curse of our age. The demand for instant satisfaction leads to superficial personal relationships and a superficial Christian faith. Many students discover Christianity for the first time while at college or university. This discovery often happens alongside other important events like leaving the parental home, falling in love, or gaining independence of thought and action. As a result, initial emphasis often falls on the emotional and experiential aspects of Christianity. There is nothing wrong with this! Christianity has abundant resources for those who wish to place emphasis on the role of experience in the life of faith. But there is more to faith than that.
Faith has three main elements. In the first place, it is trust in God. It is a confidence in the trustworthiness, fidelity and reliability of God. It is about rejoicing in his presence and power, being open to his prompting and guidance through prayer, and experiencing the motivation and comfort of the Holy Spirit. It is a deep sense of longing to be close to God, of wanting to praise his name, of being aware of his presence. In many ways, this aspect of Christian faith is like being in love with someone: you want to be with them, enjoying their presence and feeling secure with them. It concerns the heart, rather than the head; it is emotional, rather than intellectual. It is the powerhouse of Christian life, keeping us going through the difficult times and exciting us during the good times.
The difficulty is that all too many people seem to get no further than this stage. Their faith can easily become nothing more than emotion. It seems shallow. It has not really taken root, and is vulnerable. Yet faith can only flourish when it sinks deep roots. There is more to faith than emotion, experience and feelings, however important they may be to you. Christianity isn’t just about experiencing God – it’s about sticking to God. A mature faith is something secure, something you can rely on. If your faith is not deeply rooted, you will be tempted to find security in something else, only to find that this alternative will fail you (Matthew 7:24–27).
In the second place, faith is understanding more about God, Jesus Christ and human nature and destiny. By its very nature, faith seeks understanding. It seeks to take root in our minds, as we think through the implications of our experience of the risen Christ. To become a Christian is to encounter the reality of God; to become a disciple is to allow this encounter to shape the way in which we think – and act.
For in the third place, faith is obedience. Paul speaks of the ‘obedience that comes from faith’ (Romans 1:5, NIV), making the point that faith must express itself in the way we act. ‘Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, from practice more than speculation’ (Joseph Addison). Or, as the Oxford writer W. H. Griffith-Thomas put it, nicely linking these together:
[Faith] commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence; it continues in the confidence of the heart or emotions based on conviction, and it is crowned in the consent of the will, by means of which the conviction and confidence are expressed in conduct.
And it’s at this point doubt can come in, simply because you have allowed your faith to be shallow. The New Testament often compares faith to a growing plant – a helpful model to which we shall return frequently in this book. It is easy to uproot a plant in its early stages of growth; once it has laid down roots, however, it is much harder to dislodge. By failing to allow their faith to take root, some Christians make themselves vulnerable to doubt. They haven’t thought about their faith. For example, someone may raise a question about the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. They don’t know the answer. So doubts begin to creep in – often quite needless doubts, it must be said.
If this happens to you, view it in the right way. The gospel isn’t an illusion shown up for what it really is by hard questions – like the emperor’s clothes in the famous story by Hans Christian Andersen. The fact that you haven’t been able to give adequate answers to some person’s questions or objections to your faith doesn’t mean Christianity falls to pieces the moment people start asking hard questions! It doesn’t mean you’ve committed some kind of intellectual suicide by becoming a Christian. It shouldn’t mean your confidence and trust in the gospel collapse, like a deflating balloon, just because someone asked you a question you couldn’t answer. It does, however, mean you haven’t thought these things through.
Your faith is real – but it is not mature. It may be a little shallow and superficial. But – and this matters enormously! – faith can grow, and it strengthens as it grows. It needs to take root, and grow into a strong, vibrant plant. The problem often lies not in the gospel, but in the nature and depth of your response to it. You have allowed the gospel to capture your imagination, but not your mind. Your faith is shallow, when it should be – and can be – profound. Your failure here ought to be a challenge to you to go away and read more deeply about these matters, or talk them over with other more experienced Christians. In addition to helping you deepen your understanding of these things, doing this will enable you to be more helpful to those interested in learning about Christianity.
This doesn’t mean you should try harder to believe, as if it were by wishing harder that difficulties disappear. This idea of ‘faith in faith’ won’t get you far. You should see doubt as pointing to your faith being based on weak foundations. It is those foundations that need attention. A superficial faith is a vulnerable faith, easily (and needlessly) upset when confronted with questions or criticism.
Faith is like reinforced concrete. Concrete reinforced with a steel framework is able to stand far greater stress and strain than concrete on its own. Experience reinforced with understanding will not crumble easily under pressure. Again, faith is like the flesh and bones of a human body. Just as the human skeleton supports the flesh, giving it shape and strength, so understanding supports and gives shape to Christian experience. Without the skeleton, the human body would collapse into a floppy mass. Without flesh, a skeleton is lifeless, hollow and empty. Both flesh and bones are needed if the body is to grow and function properly. Faith needs the vitality of experience if it is to live – and the support of understanding if it is to survive. So reinforce your faith with understanding.