Rational Faith

One of the most pressing questions people have in regards to religious faith is this. Can faith be reasonable? By reasonable, my definition is in terms of this: Can a rational and reasonable person remain a rational and reasonable person and still have faith in God? As I like to consider myself to be a rational and reasonable person who has faith in God, my answer is obviously in the affirmative.

Having said this, the largest ‘religious’ growth group is that of people who do not have any faith in a supreme being or are highly skeptical. What is interesting is that in questioning people about their lack of faith the issue is often a lot less about an idea of God and a lot more on how religion is practiced. As people lose faith in religion they lose faith in God.

There are lots of good reasons to lose faith in religion. I have often felt that the best evangelists for atheism are Christians. This comes from several different directions.

The first direction is that many ‘believers’ make people of faith appear to be ignorant and unwilling to embrace science and or technological development. I sat, watching in amazement, that a person was explaining that modern science has proven that the world is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs and people lived side by side with each other in those days. The fact that this allegedly modern science is discounted by the vast majority of the scientific community which is actually almost speechless at hearing on how things were dated, seemed to have eluded the presenter. To be frank, this struck me as coming from the Fred Flintstone School of Science. I watched the television and found myself saying, “Dino, Daddy’s home!”

Modern day science and good theology are not incompatible. Bad theology and science, are, however. When people are continually confronted with a bad theological world view they will embrace Flintstone Science and make everyone who is a person of faith looks ignorant. Faith does not require being ignorant.

A second issue is this. People often confuse certitude with faith.

Faith, by its very definition, requires a step into the unknown and the unknowable. It requires that ‘leap of faith’ from reason to pure belief in something that cannot be proven. World religions are built on faith in a Supreme Being, not certitude. Certitude is something that can be proven, objectively, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Strong faith has a strong belief in something; but that strong belief cannot be proven. Anecdotal witnessing is wonderful and inspirational, but it proves very little other than the conviction of the person doing the witnessing.

When people of faith claim to ‘know’ God’s will, and ‘know’ what God has called them to do and that they ‘know’ God, they are not witnessing to faith. They are making claims of certitude and certitude (not doubt) is actually the opposite of faith. And, because they claim certitude, a certitude that they can only witness to, but never prove, they often repel people who are seeking.

A third point is this, and I’m using Christianity as an example. Christianity is not about politics. When people speak of religious voting blocks it is often a strange image considering that Christianity is founded on faith in Christ and the teachings of Jesus, and Jesus was remarkable apolitical.

Jesus’ ‘render unto Caesar’ moment was so interesting because Jesus demonstrated little to know interest in Caesar. His indifference to Caesar was readily apparent. Later, facing death, Jesus treated Pontius Pilate with complete indifference. In a day and age when people were looking for a leader to rise up against the Romans, Jesus was preaching about a Kingdom not of this world. In terms of morality, Jesus had two major topics. They were ill treatment of the impoverished and self-righteousness. Jesus found the self-righteousness of the crowd wanting to stone an adulterous woman to be significantly more appalling than the woman’s sex life. He did tell her to ‘sin no more,’ which means he acknowledged that she had done wrong, but her adultery was not the burning issue in his life.

In the conventions of the two major parties this past summer God was mentioned a lot. It appeared that both parties were running with God on their side. I strongly doubt that neither party would have ever thought of inviting Jesus to speak to their conventions because Jesus’ words to them might have peeled the pain off the walls of the hall or melted the stadium seats. Yet everyone wanted God on their side; a far easier claim with God in Heaven rather than on the floor...

Is faith rational? Yes. Within limits. Faith does require a leap into the unknown; but leaping into the unknown is not unreasonable. It only becomes unreasonable when we make it so.