9/4/12 Ramone,
55
Is faith just "wishful thinking"?
It was a beautiful day out on the sidewalk, and I came across a community organizer canvasing the neighborhood and collecting names on a petition to raise the minimum wage in Chicago.
Ugo, from Nigeria, agreed to talk about his beliefs about life after death, and prefaced his statements by saying, “Of course we really can’t know what happens”. He then went on to tell about what he would like to believe – reincarnation - and easily agreed afterward that all this was merely “wishful thinking”.
But are faith and wishful thinking two different things? People say that our faith is just a crutch we rely on to help us through the uncertainty of the unknowable, but that would just be wishful thinking, not faith.
Our modern understanding of “faith” is often different from the biblical and historical understanding. Skeptics often laugh at faith as “believing in spite of the evidence”, and see faith as being on the opposite end of a spectrum with science and rational thought at the other end.
But the historical and biblical view of faith is more on the order of “believing because of the evidence”. This is a far cry from the childish fantasy or wishful thinking that many people believe faith to be. Hebrews 11 tells us “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
It goes on to tell us what this confidence, this assurance people had led them to do throughout biblical history: they were people who “conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword…”
These are not the actions of people who were motivated by wishful thinking or simply relied on faith as a crutch. They were people who put their lives on the line for something they were convinced of, something they were confident of. Their faith was a sign of strength and assurance, not weakness. It came largely from evidence of what God had done, and was transformed into a faith in what God will do.
Christianity is a faith based on historical events, not wishful fantasies. Our modern-day belief that faith must be “in spite of the evidence” is contradicted by John’s statement as to why he left an historical account of Jesus’ life and ministry: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
We can believe because of the historical evidence, and in spite of the wishful thinking of skeptics.
Thanks, Ugo, for allowing me to record our conversation! It can be seen at https://youtu.be/9DbFkb_Bb3s on my YouTube channel.
It was a beautiful day out on the sidewalk, and I came across a community organizer canvasing the neighborhood and collecting names on a petition to raise the minimum wage in Chicago.
Ugo, from Nigeria, agreed to talk about his beliefs about life after death, and prefaced his statements by saying, “Of course we really can’t know what happens”. He then went on to tell about what he would like to believe – reincarnation - and easily agreed afterward that all this was merely “wishful thinking”.
But are faith and wishful thinking two different things? People say that our faith is just a crutch we rely on to help us through the uncertainty of the unknowable, but that would just be wishful thinking, not faith.
Our modern understanding of “faith” is often different from the biblical and historical understanding. Skeptics often laugh at faith as “believing in spite of the evidence”, and see faith as being on the opposite end of a spectrum with science and rational thought at the other end.
But the historical and biblical view of faith is more on the order of “believing because of the evidence”. This is a far cry from the childish fantasy or wishful thinking that many people believe faith to be. Hebrews 11 tells us “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
It goes on to tell us what this confidence, this assurance people had led them to do throughout biblical history: they were people who “conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword…”
These are not the actions of people who were motivated by wishful thinking or simply relied on faith as a crutch. They were people who put their lives on the line for something they were convinced of, something they were confident of. Their faith was a sign of strength and assurance, not weakness. It came largely from evidence of what God had done, and was transformed into a faith in what God will do.
Christianity is a faith based on historical events, not wishful fantasies. Our modern-day belief that faith must be “in spite of the evidence” is contradicted by John’s statement as to why he left an historical account of Jesus’ life and ministry: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
We can believe because of the historical evidence, and in spite of the wishful thinking of skeptics.
Thanks, Ugo, for allowing me to record our conversation! It can be seen at https://youtu.be/9DbFkb_Bb3s on my YouTube channel.
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