Reasonable Faith

 11/14                                 Keevan                       25
A flat tire on my car and a loose belt on his brought us two strangers together unexpectedly in a PepBoys waiting room while our cars were being fixed.  A Sunday NFL game was on the TV and we chatted a while, but I decided to go out on a limb and put the conversation on a completely different level: “Say, I have an interesting question for you, if you don’t mind my asking”  “Sure, what’s up?”  “What do you think happens after this life?”  “I have no idea” he answered quickly.  He was looking at it from a scientific point of view, where truth is thought to be that which can be predicted or measured and proven absolutely, so I said “Well I can’t prove anything, but I do think its possible to have a very reasonable faith about it.  It’s not like trying to believe in some random thing like pink unicorns or anything!  So, do you have any kind of church background?  He did, and said “Sure, I believe that Jesus is my Savior and all that” – so we went on to talk about all that meant to him.  It turned out that he – Keevan, about 25 – had grown up in church and knew all the church lingo and rhetoric at a surface level, but had no idea about the “how” and “why” behind it all. He had a certain amount of faith, but it was a childhood, untested, unreasoned faith.  If Jesus is our Savior, what did he save us from?  Why is the cross so important?  What does the death of a Jewish carpenter so long ago have to do with our being forgiven today?  Keevan had fallen away from church, and only recently started to return to his childhood faith.  But he also still had only a childhood understanding, so I tried to help him see that Christianity is not just another childhood fairy tale.  It is, indeed, a reasonable faith.