DO YOU BELIEVE?

Question #4

“What do you believe, and why do you believe it?”

Faith is the final stage and expression of knowledge. These are the final questions of how we know. One of the mistaken notions about belief is that it is little more than supposition. That misunderstands the foundation and force of faith. Belief adds to knowledge the force of conviction and action. Belief or faith places your life on the line for someone or something. A scientist must believe in the consistency of experience or experiment. We all have unquestioned faith in gravity. Faith is a measure of knowledge. Absolute knowledge is beyond humanity. It is reserved for God. He has put enough knowledge in this world to make trusting Him reasonable. But He has limited our knowledge enough that we must step out on faith.

Biblical faith in God is personal and relational. One of my favorite pictures of faith comes from my own childhood. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when this took place, but I was pretty young. We had a pump house slanting down from the edge of our garage. And some old tires were leaning up against the pump house wall. I managed to climb up on to the tires. And standing on the tires, I was able to grasp the roof and pull myself up. I walked up the slanting shingles and put my arms over the parapet around the top of our garage. It was easy to climb onto the parapet and then over the arch onto the porch of our Spanish style house. Up to this time the second story of our house filled my vision. But when I turned around on the porch I realized that I was ten or twelve feet above our driveway. I was terrified. I began to scream and yell for help. My father came out of the garage where he had been working. He looked up at me with a deadpan expression on his face. To this day I can see Dad reaching up with the work gloves that he always wore, and saying, “Jump David!” I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth and jumped into my father’s waiting embrace.

I trusted my father. I was not trusting our paved driveway to catch me. In faith we respond to God Himself. We courageously take Him at His word. This demonstrates as well as anything I know, the need to ask the second half of this question. “Why?” I believed even though I was afraid, because I knew I could trust my father’s word. This question also applies to whatever I doubt or disbelieve. As in most situations that call for faith, I was tempted to doubt. I was tempted to be too fearful to jump. But examining my doubts in that case would not have shown them to be logical, unless it would have been good for me to stay up on the roof in my terror.

As I pen these words I have metastatic cancer. I still do not know the day of my death, but I have sound reason to believe in my own mortality. I may not be close enough to the edge of that cliff to panic. But I know I will be tempted to be terrified when the time comes. That is the natural emotional response to this final leap of faith. But the best reasoned response I can make at this point is to trust God’s words to me, and keep my eyes fixed on Him.

http://writingprayerfully.blogspot.com/

http://daveswatch.com/