On Faith

I thought I would write a note about faith. Reading an interesting book on the historical development of select fields of mathematics I reached a place where the author commended Descartes method of philosophical introspection for first principles of knowledge. He suggested it as being exemplary of a method for self-help.

I enjoy reading philosophy and the meditations on a method have stimulated generations of people to consider basic assumptions about experience. Yet the axiom suggested; taking nothing on faith, seems implicitly invalid; this is why…

Experience of the world implicitly presents itself in structure. Today we might reduce our description for causation of the structure to physicalist processes relating to quantum theory; however it is at any rate structured and therefore heterodox in nature. One’s own conscious experience exists of a structured reality not generated by one’s own thought.

It might be popular for some moderns to suggest that a tabula rasa like existential appreciation of reality is requisite for making decisions about belief and subjective epistemological relationships to things external. It isn’t necessary to be so far existentially isolated in making myriad practical judgments about the world and of religious matters inevitably. Not all questions about faith in God or faith in Jesus Christ occur within a subjective, existential criterion though it may be popular to convince people that it is the case.

Let me provide a few examples about practical questions of faith compared to an abstract, existential paradigm for contemplating the meaning of faith.

Example 1-You are alone on a small, wet, cold island in Alaska with dwindling supplies. You have no batteries for communication devices and food is running low. A winter storm may occur so looking for food may be a good idea. A week before the fellow that dropped you off on the island said that he would return today at eleven. You have faith that he will return on time and so pack and are ready at the landing site instead of foraging for food somewhere else.

Example 2-The Japanese Army has invaded the Philippines. You are a local with a libertarian political philosophy the Japanese would repress. An American General evacuating the Philippines says ‘I shall return’. You have faith and fight the Japanese as an insurgent from the jungle with faith that one day the General will return to reinforce the resistance. Without faith, the prospects for resistance might have seemed futile.

3) Two thousand years ago a UFO visits the Earth and an alien named Morty gets off. Soon he instructs the villagers of a remote desert collection of ramshackle dwellings that someday in the distant future he will return to bring desalinating equipment in order to help make the production of fresh water and lemonade possible for less cost than rival villagers sell it for presently. All he needs now is the sacrifice of some barbecued goats to fuel his vehicle.

The villagers provide the goat meat and the alien departs in his UFO. A cult of faith develops that lasts quietly in the village for two millennia. It is not unreasonable for the villagers’ descendents to have faith that the UFO will return as promised with their water making equipment is it?

Example 4- A anthropologist is alone in an African jungle walking to a village. Suddenly she is aware that millions of army ants are moving her way. She walks faster and soon reaches a small ravine at the bottom of which is a crocodile infested creek.

There are two planks that cross over to the far side of the creek, and two men telling her to cross over their plank safety. One man accuses the other have being a deceiver, and that his plank is rotten and a death trap for western anthropologists. The other man is humble, and says he paid for the plank himself, knows it to be safe, and the only thing he charges to use it is faith.

The anthropologist chooses to have faith and crosses to safety before the woman eating army ants reach the barrier.

Example 5- Jesus Christ arrived on Earth about the year 3 B.C. and at age 30 began a three year ministry to evangelize the people of the world with the good news that He is God. If people have faith that He is God and paid for their sins with the sacrifice of His own life-and accept Him as their Savior-then he will take them unto heaven eventually and eternal life reconciled unto God the Father.

In other words, Christians are to have faith that Jesus Christ really plans to return to Earth one day, or otherwise liberate them from the bondage of mortal life and the problems of sin and evil. Faith that Jesus Christ will return is not an abstract intellectual or philosophical construction instead of a belief that a real man who lived at a particular moment in history actual was who he said he was, overcame death with resurrection and will return to wrap up his mission-to-Earth at some point in the future.

Faith in Jesus Christ is a belief in a particular individual and trust in His word.