Ryan Deyoung Professor Quanstrom Christian Faith Basis of Faith April 11, 2011 To Believe Or Not To Believe

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Is faith a necessity for human beings? Do we need it to survive, or thrive? C.S. Lewis states: "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important". The importance of Christianity or faith seems to be evident across all cultures and ages. But why would one want to have it? Furthermore, who can describe it or prove it? Christianity is the faith behind a set of beliefs. So if it is either infinitesimally important or unimportant why is it not proven or disproven with concrete evidence? Here in lies the most important question to any human being on earth. Christianity and faith are important and exist. To prove this it must be proven how faith is grounded, why it needs to be verifiable, upon what authority scriptures are based (in Christianity), and how important the following are to my personal faith: verification of Scripture, tradition, personal experience, and reasonableness of the truth claims of faith. Faith needs to be grounded on a balance of person experience and physical evidence. There are many instances that a person could loose faith in Christianity simply because there is no scientific evidence to prove it. This would remove the necessity for faith to begin with. There are also many reasons to stray away from faith: it binds us, controls us, forces us to work harder and love people we do not want to. If Christians relied on God to just present us physical evidence, there would not be any

Deyoung 2 followers. Physical evidence, though disputable, can be found in the world. Even with proof, a human being needs more than physical evidence. They need a relationship. Usually, a person comes to God through personal experience. This can be through a bad or good experience. Some people are driven to a point where they need God. For example, an alcoholic can have many bad nights but one in particular drives him to do things he doesnt normally do. He might wake up next to someone he barely knows and realize this life is not on track and needs to make a change. Others that come to the faith might see the benefits and have experiences where they feel God move in their life. For example I, along with many believers at Olivet, gave my life as a young child. This was during an important year in my life and a message had hit home that day. However, this was just the start. I had not really grew to know Jesus until later, especially in my college years where I was challenged in my beliefs. This is where I strongly believe that faith should be grounded. If our religion comes just from what we are taught, it will fade. But if it is grounded by experience that is particular and special to each of us, it will last until we forget. But when a person gives their life to Christ, they tend to feel Him more and more while searching for Him. Every Christian that has stuck with through the twists and turns of being an adolescent is because they made their religion their own and created a relationship in Jesus Christ. Our faith is directly correlated to our relationship with Christ. To anyone who believes the contrary, I urge to take a week away from Him and see if life gets easier or better. A person who does not have a relationship will be a moral person, but will not thrive in Christ. This is where God is found and where faith is grounded.

Deyoung 3 Faith needs to verifiable. There are a lot of religions that fail due to lack of validation. These are typically of the cult nature, and do not last long. Some however still exist today and are founded on historical books and documents. A persons faith needs to be backed up in some type of scripture. To show this, I will use the example of a house builder that builds on many foundations. The first house the man built was on sand. The storms came, and the house fell because the foundation was not there. The second house was built on the rock (or solid ground) and the storms came and the house did not fall. The house is like our faith, and the Bible is like the foundation. Sure the man built a house in the first example and had faith, but it wasnt backed up with a solid understanding and validity. We must make sure that when we speak about faith it cannot just be blind faith, and that we wont just fall because someone shakes our faith. Scriptures authority is found in many places. This is typically through historical evidence. For example, almost all of the cities and events that occur in the Bible exist today or were documented in unbiased, 3rd party documents. This continually occurs in the news today. Archeologists are still finding items from the era and events while Jesus was on this earth. Just a few weeks ago, a new artifact (metallic book) was found from this era. Although this does not prove Jesus existence, it helps prove that the history surrounding the Bible is true. According to religion-online.org, Dr. J.O. Kinnaman states, "of the hundreds of thousands of artifacts found by other archaeologists, not one has ever been discovered that contradicts or denies one word, phrase, clause, or sentence of the bible, but always confirms and verifies the facts of the Biblical record" (Kinnaman). This cannot be said about all religions and definitely helps in an argument against those who oppose the validity of the Bible.

Deyoung 4 Scriptures authority is also based in itself. The Bible is so old that no other historical book precedes it chronologically. This means that in the same respect that God proves himself because no one was before Him. Another important fact to note is that most of culture is based on the morals and traditions of the Bible. It can also be used for historical citing in many ways. This category is not straight forward, but this is where faith plays an integral role. Many people choose not to acknowledge the Bible or Christianity as grounds of authority, but their claims are always refuted. This cannot be said about other religions and faiths. Historical veracity of Scripture is extremely important. That being said it is not the most important. Meaning, we are expected to follow scripture, studying it, digesting it, living it. But our faith would not thrive without a relationship with Jesus Christ that cannot be historically verified. The fact of the matter is that every believer must find his or her line of how literal the Bible should be taken. There are contractions that we as believers have to own to progress to the next generation. Some examples are the creation story, how David met Solomon, how many people were fed at the feeding during the Sermon on the Mount, and other similar arguments. The truth is numbers, days, specifics, and people dont matter. Thats right, Adam and Eve and their story does not matter. God created ex nihilio, or from nothing. The specifics seem to fade away after the idea is created. The most important thing about the Bible and Christianity is the lessons and ideas learned from it. The Sermon on the Mount is a perfect example. Christ continually hands out demands of us as humans that are absurd and cannot be completed by ourselves. His entire message, if read correctly,

Deyoung 5 can be a repetition of how we are to fully rely on Christ because there are too many things on this earth that we are not capable of doing ourselves. I personally believe that God created the Bible in such a way to not only span ages and cultures, but to force us to look deeper and realize we will never be able to fully contemplate who God really is. All we can do is study the Bible and let the Holy Spirit do the work, trying to understand what God wanted us to get out of the passage. Everyone might read and see a message differently. This happens frequently because everyone has a different past with different experiences that add to and support different ideas. That being said we must hold to consistencies. For example, the Ten Commandments are not negotiable. This has been true except for the definition of kill/murder and war. But this discussion can be ended if we followed the other commandments and chose to love each other. There would be no need to get to this point, and if we are called to be martyrs this means we should never kill another person. Tradition has a place in faith. Traditions in the church can range anywhere from lighting advent candles to fasting for 40 days. Although not all traditions are studied and observed, they have a place. Traditions are important if and only if the focus is not on the tradition itself. This has been a long time issue in the church that has led to legalism and pushing many people away from the church, creating judge mentalist followers against those who dont observe. The initial idea of traditions is to remind or teach those who dont know about something important to that religion. Personally, with the progression of western culture, traditions are useless and are misconstrued and do more harm than good to outsiders looking in at the church. How would an outsider think about taking the sacrament and drinking a dead mans blood? This was used in a

Deyoung 6 pervious face of the church and is not seen in the same way by the new generation of the church. This also includes meeting in a large area listening to one person speak at the front for an hour with sub-par music. This face has been changing into smaller groups and better music where a new generation feels and discusses their relationship with Jesus Christ. Personal experience is the most important factor to a persons faith. This is the reason believers will be loyal to their faith. Some of the strongest believers in the church are those that came to the faith in their later years after a Godless past. For example a professor at Olivet Nazarene University named Howard Van Dyke III came to his faith after a long stint with drugs, alcohol, and debauchery. This man then made it a priority to read the Bible and know God fully. He became entrenched in Gods presence and could not let go. His testimony has spread ripples through all communities both believers and non-believers. Mr. Van Dyke has even impacted my life while at Olivet, challenging my faith to grow stronger in what I believe. He also challenged what would shake it and how strong I would be when even the most enticing situations change my mind. But through the hard times, we realize what is important and good in this world. A reality check can be good for anyone as long as they make the decision to come back together with God. The reasonableness of the truth claims of faith is a large topic and could take books to fully understand and discuss. Faith promises many things including self-control and eternal life. Although this is assumed, they cannot be proven. Faith doesnt need to be reasonable. It cant be fully described, seen, or understood. Faith is given from God and held by us. It doesnt matter how it happens, we just need to make sure that we

Deyoung 7 have faith. Faith is hope, without hope life is worthless. This however, does not excuse faith from recklessness and lack of accountability. There is a beautiful relationship between faith and knowledge that only Jesus Christ has shown us. As stated before: faith, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important. Since faith is hope for a better world, I would bank on it being of infinite importance. We can either drift around in this world searching for answers in all the dark places that entice us in, or trust in Jesus and find ourselves in Him. Every other religion gives an ultimatum to be a good person and you will go to their respective heavens. Christianity calls for something higher, a relationship with Jesus. He is a man who wants to walk through life with us. He loves us so much that He wants to hurt when we hurt. This relationship, this faithfulness, is why I believe, and choose to give Him just a fraction of the faith that He deserves.

Deyoung 8 Works Cited

Kinnaman, J.O. The Christian Century 23 Aug. 2005: 18-21. Web. <http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3262>.