Why does faith matter?
When I was in high school I had a wonderful English teacher who, I'm sure, did not believe in Jesus.
“You will never find out what I believe about religion,” he said, which of course fanned a lot of speculation among my friends and me. We decided, based on the questions he asked and his skeptical or puzzled facial expressions when matters of faith surfaced, that he was an agnostic (someone who has resigned himself to not knowing whether God exists) or perhaps an atheist.
I learned so much from Mr. Pelzie, particularly about writing, and I still use what I learned to this day. His skepticism, or at least my perception of it, caused me to wonder, though, whether Jesus is real and whether the Bible is true. Might it not all be wish fulfillment? If a man as obviously intelligent as Mr. Pelzie doesn’t believe, maybe I’d been taking too much for granted; maybe I was wrong about the Bible and Jesus. Did he even really exist? Was the Bible full of myths and legends?
As I thought about this, and no doubt did a fair amount of praying about it as well (although I realized that might not do any good, if Jesus wasn’t real and if the Bible wasn’t true), I began to realize that the whole case for the reality of Jesus rose and fell on one thing: the resurrection of Christ. The Apostle Paul admitted as much: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19).
This was the school year 1968-1969, my junior year, and Evidence that Demands a Verdict was still three or four years in the future. There were, however, many wonderful books of Christian apologetics available to me and quite a few books of skepticism and downright hostility toward Christianity. I read whatever I could and came to the conclusion that:
- Jesus was a real person who really did live.
- He was executed for blasphemy.
- He was buried in a tomb.
- He came back to life shortly thereafter.
If this sequence of events actually occurred, then the Bible could substantially be true, although, as I had learned, its truth might not be as obvious as a flippant reader might expect. So, it was in a summer camp between my junior and senior years I prayed something like this: “Lord, you gave your life to me, now I give my life to you.” Probably deep down I thought God was getting a pretty good deal, that he was lucky to have me; but it was a sincere commitment nonetheless and fortunately, God did not quibble with my arrogance, at least not right away.
Yes, faith matters. If we believe in the resurrected Christ, we act--or should act--in a way that reflects that. If we believe something else (such as the superiority of the Aryan race like Hitler, or in Marxism like Mao and Pol Pot), then we will behave in a different way.
This blog article was based on my book: Five Languages of Evidence: How to Speak about Reasons for Christianity in a Post-truth World. Not yet published; available upon request.
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