To believe something, it needs to make sense. We are reasonable creatures. Every time we argue something, we use our reason. When we notice two plus two is four, we use reason. When we discern hypocrisy or foolishness we use reason. When we refuse to believe something that is self-contradictory, we use reason. Only a fool would entrust his life to something that is nonsense.
Faith can either be reasonable or blind. Consider the difference in this scenario:
I go to the doctor because I feel sick. He checks me over, does a blood test and whatnot, before concluding that I have strep throat. He writes out a prescription and says, “This is what you need. You’ll feel better in a day or two.”
As I walk into the pharmacy, I could wonder if the doctor is correct in this diagnosis and prescription. He could be mistaken. I don’t have any certain way to know his diagnosis is correct or that he has prescribed the right medicine, especially because I can’t read his writing. What if he’s wrong?
On the other hand, he is a doctor. He has many years of training in medicine. I know the government controls who can practice medicine. Then there was that blood test… All things considered, I decide to get the medicine and take it.
That’s reasonable faith. I’m still exerting faith in my doctor and his prescription, but how different it would be from this scenario:
I stop by my buddy’s house and tell him how I feel. He says, “Come back here; I think I have something for you.” In his medicine cabinet, he fumbles through dozens of pill bottles, finally producing one. “Here, you should take this,” he offers.
I look at the bottle with some unrecognizable name. “Why do you think I should take this and what is it?” I scowl
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “I think it could be good… I think I took that awhile back and it seemed to work for me.”
Would you nod and start popping those pills? Only if you’re a fool! Those pills could be anything. You have no reason to believe this is a medicine useful for your condition. Taking these pills would be blind faith—faith without any reasonable basis. It’s nothing like the reasonable faith in the previous scenario with the doctor.
As ridiculous as this second story might seem, some people see faith this way. Faith is just something you choose to believe, something you entrust yourself to; but reason has nothing to do with it. That’s not the kind of faith we are going to consider in this book. To the contrary, we will assume that if a creator God is real, he must have made us as reasonable, thinking beings. Therefore, whatever we believe had better have a strong basis. This area is too important to fling ourselves out into black space on the theory that something good might happen. Besides, as we’ll see, God has gone out of his way to give people powerful reasons to trust him.