Is our faith reasonable? Is our faith blind by definition? Does it make sense for us to believe in the resurrection of a literal Jesus? Or a triune God? Or an inerrant Bible?
These questions and others like them are important and must be answered. Some would argue that if we cannot answer these questions then we have no business bringing Christianity into the public square. If our faith is unreasonable then what business does it have in the marketplace or the sciences? If thinking critically is optional for Christians then what bearing does our faith have on society at large?
When an argumentative lawyer in Matthew 22:37 asks Jesus what the greatest commandment is, He answers him with the mandate to love God and love people. That is often the track many teachers take when approaching this text. But let us not stride over how Jesus said to love God. “With all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Modern American Christianity is great at the first two, but we are lousy at the last one.
Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of London in the 1800s, said, “Faith is reason at rest in God.” What he meant was that we are not irrational fools driven by unfettered emotions to believe there is an infinite yet personal God who is all-powerful and perfectly righteous. Are we saved by faith? Absolutely. (Ephesians 2:8-9) Is it impossible to please God without faith? Absolutely. (Hebrews 11:6)
But this faith of ours is not a blind leap into unknowable nothingness.
As one short example, let’s take the Moral Argument. Can morality exist outside of an all-good, all-powerful God? To the Christian, the answer is an obvious “no.” But why? The entirety of humanity agrees that objective moral principles exist, yet when pushed they have no basis to explain why they exist. Of course they will offer up evolutionary reasons, but those reasons boil down to mutually beneficial selfishness amongst animal groups—not exactly objective morality. So when they are outraged by a case of adultery that touches their lives, they have no tangible reason. Whereas, we are equally outraged because we have Exodus 20:14. We have a source to explain that which is innately present in all people.
So I ask again, is our faith reasonable? Yes. Yes it is. Let us be encouraged to love our God with all our minds in order to fulfill the directive of the apostle in 1 Peter 3:15, “But sanctify Christ in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.”
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