Keep The Faith?

If you have not had the pleasure of browsing our Multimedia and Print section then you have not read "Keep the Faith?" by author Sue Lewis.  In this thoughtful essay, Sue explores what the term "faith" means for herself as well as providing insight on what others from different religions have shared with her. Sue offers the reader layer upon layer of real life experience that some of you might find a common bond with - I know I did.  Enjoy!...

At least once in the life of every thoughtful person the questions arise, “Does God exist, how does one come to believe in God, and is belief in God something worth keeping?” For some people, faith is a set of beliefs that they decide to possess — a chosen weapon, a mental amulet against despair. Other people insist that belief is a gift from God, something people can do absolutely nothing to obtain. There is another group of people who insist that belief has to be based upon reliable evidence. Life has taught me that belief based upon evidence is the only faith worth keeping — it alone has the power to counteract despair and bring meaning to life.

In the world today, one encounters a bewildering array of beliefs. Being raised in a Calvinist household, I was told that faith was a gift from God — you have it or you don’t because He gave it to you or He didn’t. You do nothing in order to have faith. To say that you do takes glory away from God and “ascribes it unto oneself.” How do you know that you have faith? You believe. Easy. Case closed. Unless you don’t believe - then you’re in big trouble — destined to be tortured in hell, physically or psychologically, forever. But don’t ask why. Who are you to question God?

One sunny San Diego morning, at age 13, I lay upon my bed reading the Gospel of John. I desperately wanted to believe. Then I could be sure that I wouldn’t be tormented forever in hell. Then I could tell my Jewish neighbors, caring civil right activists, how to escape the same destiny. But how could I help them when I didn’t know how to believe myself? There was no way that I could just “decide to believe.” If I decided to believe, how would I know if I really did? Because I wasn’t sure if Christianity was true or not, I had to conclude that I might not have been given the gift of faith - God might have predestined me to everlasting torment. The world outside basked in rays of sunshine, but my heart was dismal, filled with bewilderment and turmoil.

When I reached age 17, in between my first two years of college, I had come to hate the confusion and emotional pain of life. Only a few people, it seemed, were interested in treating other people and the earth in responsible, respectful ways. I didn’t want to live on a planet where people destroyed their environment, exploited one another, and turned a blind eye to suffering. During this summer, I went to work at a Jewish camp in Maine. In a cathedral of long-needle pines, I suffered abject despair every waking hour of the day. I, to be blunt, was suicidal. I had no warm, loving family to provide emotional support. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. When I was awake, I wondered if I could muster the courage to kill myself, yet, while despair said, “Let me die,” hope pleaded, “Heal me, let me live joyfully.”

It was an eclectic group of people who worked at Forest Acres — the majority of people were Jewish, but a Catholic, a Mormon and a Seventh-day Adventist couple also worked at the camp. Nauseated by despair, I asked people in the camp what they thought about God — did He exist and why did they think so? One of the first persons I asked was Pixie, a young Jewish girl just a couple of years older than I. Her face became very serious when she heard my question. In subdued tones she responded, “I understand what you’re going through - I went through the same thing. I decided to believe in God because it’s the only way that I can have peace. I go to temple every Saturday. To think that there’s no God leaves me with such a horrible feeling.” From the sad look on her face when she spoke, however, it seemed to me that she still wrestled with despair. I turned to other people for their thoughts. I told a young Jewish man about my questions and the sick feeling in my stomach that they left me with. He nodded knowingly saying, “Oh, yes, existential nausea, Herman Hesse went through the same thing. That’s why he entitled one of his books Nausea.” Sadly, however, the young man had no remedy to offer. When I spoke to the wife of the Catholic couple, she confidently explained, “Look at a little inchworm, how intricately it’s designed. There has to be a God.” I thought “Yes, one that would torture intricate beings forever in hell. I hope he’s not the God who exists.” The wife of the Mormon couple declared, “You just have to have faith that God exists. That’s what belief is.” I responded, “I can’t do that. I need evidence in order to believe. If I’m going to be “thrown into the lions’ den” for my beliefs, wishful thinking isn’t going to sustain me.”

As I continued to work at Forest Acres, questions regarding Jesus Christ suddenly poured into my mind. After age 13, I’d been able to disentangle myself from the threat of Christ torturing me forever in hell by following the Beatles’ lead - I thought of myself as one who believed in the God of Eastern religions - a God of love, I surmised, since the Beatles always sang about that. During my first year at college, however, I had taken a course in World Religions and learned what Eastern religions taught. Eastern religions did not teach about a God who loves His children, and I found no evidence to substantiate the accurateness of Eastern philosophy. A belief in Christianity, however, was out of the question. To me, Christ was a power-hungry fiend who was worse than Hitler. I hated this Christ - intensely. In spite of this, the tenacious thought that precipitously presented itself to me in my log cabin was, “If Jesus Christ hadn’t risen from the dead, why did the disciples allow themselves to be persecuted?”

Presenting objections to myself, I proposed “The disciples hallucinated.” No, I admitted, no group of people hallucinates the same thing at the same time. “The disciples stole the body” — No, people don’t die for something they know is false. If they had lied, when faced with torture or death they would have said, ‘Alright guys, game’s up. It was a good hoax, wasn’t it? Want us to teach you how we pulled it off?” Also, there were enough cynical, street-wise people in that age [as in every age] who don’t like to be duped and/or have their power-base challenged — they would have made it a point to discredit Christ’s resurrection, which easily could have been done. A five-minute walk out of town to the tomb would have squelched the story. I tried to think of some way to explain away the question, because, in my understanding, Christianity was a hideous philosophy. I looked out of the window of my log cabin and, as if speaking to the sheltering pines, I silently declared: “No! I won’t be a Christian! Christianity’s philosophy is repugnant. If that’s what God is like, I can’t love Him.”

Shortly thereafter, reduced by confusion and despair, I stood in a blossom-strewn, field on a sunlit day. As a strong breeze brushed my face I pleaded, “God, if you are there, and you are love, please, reveal yourself.”

A couple of days later, on a gray, cloudy day, I stood in front of the 7th Day Adventists’ cabin and thought, “Why go in? No one has had any answers that help.” I glanced over to the camp’s dining hall and thought, “Why don’t you just get a knife out of the kitchen, go back to your cabin, and cut your wrists? It’s hopeless. Then you can sleep and never wake up.” Another thought countered, “If God has thrown you into this world to see how you’ll cope, how can you be sure that, after you commit suicide, he won’t throw you into another ‘spiritual realm’ and say ‘There - cope’? You might as well go in. There’s nothing to lose. You’re miserable either way.” With legs of lead, I trudged up the steps and knocked on the Otis’ door.

Mrs. Otis and I sat in her dimly lit front room as subdued rays of sun streaked through the window. After I’d introduced myself, I said, “This may seem a little abrupt, but, do you believe in God?” She replied confidently, “Oh, I know there’s a God.” Like a starved person longing for food, I asked, “How do you know?” Thoughtfully, she responded, “There are answers to prayer.” She told me a wonderful story about a missionary who had been kidnapped. Her glasses had been lost in the process, and unfortunately, she had terrible vision. So that she could escape, the missionary asked God to help her find her glasses while there was still daylight. Her glasses were never found. When the missionary woke up the next morning, it suddenly dawned on her that she was able to see perfectly; she subsequently eluded her kidnappers. I thought, “These 7th Day Adventists are so concerned about keeping the Ten Commandments that they’re even careful to rest on the seventh, instead of the first, day of the week. I don’t think they would lie.” A ray of hope pierced the gloom.

This hope, I feared, would be overshadowed after I asked, “How can you, as Christians, say that ‘God is love’ when He tortures people forever in hell?” Mrs. Otis responded happily, “But the Bible doesn’t say that.” Crushed and angry, I countered, “I’m sorry, but I know a few too many verses about ‘everlasting fire’ that say He does.” I greatly resented it when people twisted the facts. If God revealed Himself through scripture, interpretations had better be consistent with the text. Mrs. Otis kindly said, “But in the book of Jude, it says that Sodom and Gomorrah are given as examples of ‘everlasting fire,’ and they’re not burning today.” Shocked, I said, “What? Where is that?!” We read Jude, along with several other verses that say the wicked are to be destroyed, verses which disclose that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked - he only desires that they turn from their cruel ways and live (Ezekiel 33:11). Stunned, I asked her, “Why hasn’t anyone ever told me this before? I need to go home and read the context of these verses to be sure of what they say.” When I did, the same question rose repeatedly in my mind, “Why didn’t anyone ever share this with me? The contexts support everything that Mrs. Otis said.” I looked back on the confused despair that I, and others, had experienced. I wondered, “Is God reaching out to me?”

Before I made any decisions, I wanted to ask my religion professors at Trinity University what they thought about the Judeo-Christian scriptures. The professors recommended books by liberal theologians such as Bultmann, Robinson, and Tillich. Some of these authors knowingly asserted that they had found “the historical Jesus” by deleting portions of the New Testament that included miracles. Miracles, they claimed, were an indication of legendary myths. I thought, “I’m only seventeen. These men are supposed to be very intelligent, but their presuppositions seem unreasonable. If God is all-powerful, why couldn’t he perform miracles? What am I missing here?” Shortly after reading the liberal theologians, I picked up a book entitled Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis, in which a devil named Screwtape writes a series of letters to his nephew, Wormwood, coaching him in the arts of deception. Screwtape encourages Wormwood to present non-logical arguments about “the historical Jesus,” and then inspire humans to call such statements “brilliant.” (Lewis, The Screwtape Letters 86) I reflected upon the fact that C. S. Lewis was a literary genius and an extremely reluctant convert to Christianity (Lewis, Surprised by Joy 223). As a professor at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, he was an expert in identifying myth and legend. I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t “crazy” — as C. S. Lewis and I had both observed, the theologians’ presuppositions were not logical.

Subsequently, I learned of other very intelligent people who found the evidence for Christ’s resurrection to be constraining. Dr. Simon Greenleaf was one of the two Harvard University law professors responsible for elevating Harvard Law School to its distinguished position. He wrote A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, “which still is considered one of the greatest single authorities on this subject in the entire literature of legal procedure” (McDowell 11). In his search for truth, Greenleaf applied the principles of his treatise as he weighed the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. McDowell reports, “Greenleaf came to the conclusion that, according to the laws of legal evidence used in courts of law, there is more evidence for the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ than for just about any other event in history” (11). Frank Morrison, a rationalistic lawyer, disgusted by the gullibility of people who believed in Jesus’ resurrection, set out to examine historical evidence in order to disprove it. After conducting in-depth research, Morrison wrote a book entitled Who Moved the Stone? in order to share his newly-found belief in Jesus Christ (McDowell 12). McDowell writes “The sheer weight of the evidence compelled him [Morrison] to conclude that Jesus actually did rise from the dead” (McDowell 12).

It is interesting to read that, according to research done by Luke the physician, Jesus wanted people to consider evidence in order to establish their beliefs. After his resurrection, with his identity concealed, Jesus walked with two men on the road to Emmaus who were devastated over his death (Luke 24:13-32). Jesus had been crucified and buried, so their belief that he was the Messiah had been crushed. Remaining incognito, Jesus carried on a lengthy conversation with the men about the prophecies found in the Hebrew scriptures - prophecies that describe the loving personality of the Messiah, as well as His death and resurrection (Isaiah 11; 61; 52:13 — 53:12). Only after the men came to believe on the basis of evidence, did Christ choose to reveal himself (White, The Desire of Ages 796-799).

My search for truth has gone on for many years since I was a teenager — I’ve had much to learn and much to unlearn. When I returned to San Diego, I attended an extension class held by Dr. A Graham Maxwell from Loma Linda Medical University. There I learned, from the Judeo-Christian scriptures, about a God “who values nothing higher than the freedom, dignity, and individuality of His intelligent creatures, that their love, their faith, their willingness to listen and obey may be freely given. He even prefers to regard us not as servants but as friends” (Maxwell par. 2). While I don’t agree with some of the teachings of the mainstream 7th Day Adventist church, I am indebted to thoughtful people within the denomination since it is they who have provided the scriptural evidence that: 1) God destroys no man. Anyone who is destroyed in the end will have destroyed himself by placing himself so out of harmony with God that his very presence is a consuming fire, and, 2) people of all beliefs who cherish love and freedom already have Christ living inside of their hearts (John 10:16; Romans 2:13-16; 1Timothy 4:10; 1 John 4:7,8, White, Desire of Ages 638).

Can I prove that the God whom Jesus Christ called “Father” exists? No. Can science prove many of the things that it holds to be true? Absolutely not. The reality is that much solid science is not based upon proof - just like well-established belief, it is based upon extensive evidence. As Stephen Jay Gould writes in “Muller Bros. Moving & Storage,” “Science must often transcend sight to win insight. At all scales, from smallest to largest, quickest to slowest, many well-documented conclusions of science lie beyond the strictly limited domain of direct observation. No one has ever seen an electron . . .” We believe that electrons exist, however, because experiments have substantiated, time after time, that they do.

Proof and evidence, alike, are the building blocks for a logical existence. Conclusions based up evidence substantiate much of what we do in life. I can trust that the house I build won’t crumble to the ground if my architect’s credentials and workmanship provide evidence that he or she has the knowledge, ability, and experience to do a good job. Gregor Mendel had implicit faith in the laws of heredity that he repeatedly observed in nature. The study of DNA later proved Mendel’s theories, but substantiating data led to truth before DNA and its components were ever isolated. Sir Isaac Newton, thought by many to be the greatest scientist who ever lived, considered himself to be “a priest of God in the temple of nature” (Eliade 319). He found the Judeo-Christian scriptures to be reliable due to the preponderance of physical, historical, moral, and psychological evidence that corroborate their teachings.

Herein lies a crucial fact - proof dictates belief, whereas evidence invites it. A God who refuses to force Himself upon anyone would be wise to use evidence, not absolute proof, in order to establish belief.

Keep the faith? Only if it is based upon evidence. Dr. A. Graham Maxwell once mentioned that there is a canon of scripture, a canon of history, as well as a canon of personal experience from which people may draw evidence. At this point in my life, I have total confidence in what I believe. Although I have much to learn, I know that God loves everyone as if there were no other person upon the face of the earth (Matthew 18:12; Luke 15:4). I anticipate that, as I continue to learn, my joy and peace will increase. If people want to ignore evidence, they have the unenviable privilege of doing so. They do, however, indulge in a blind faith — a faith that declares truth cannot be found or is not worth searching out. If a person’s faith involves a belief that is not evidence-based, it is powerless against fear, uncertainty, and despair. I have learned from the canons of scripture, history, and life that only faith based upon evidence can satisfy the longings of the heart.

Works Cited

Eliade, Mircea, ed. The Encyclopedia of Religion. Vol. 11. New York:

Macmillan, 1987.

Lewis, C. S. Surprised by Joy. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1955.

Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Maxwell, A. Graham. Pine Knoll Publications. 2 Dec. 2002.

http://www.pineknoll.org/adventist/index.html

McDowell, Josh. The Resurrection Factor. San Bernardino: Here’s Life

Publishers, Inc., 1992.

White, Ellen G. The Desire of Ages. Nampa: Pacific Press, 1940.