sana walang heresy... ^_^
Jhoanna T. Isla Philosophy
10
2002-37298 30 March 2007
Intelligent Faith
How
does one keep his/her faith in God? At
the risk of being labeled overly spiritual, I could answer “by grace,” but
doing so would not suffice if my understanding of grace differs from the next
person’s. Besides, that would leave me
thousands of words short of the required length of this paper.
What
is grace? It is the unmerited favor of
God, freely given to man. When I say I
have kept my faith in God by grace, what I mean is I have only done so through
His enabling. And while we’re on the
track of defining terms, why don’t we look at faith also?
What
is faith? Some would equate it to
believing. But it says in the Bible that
even the demons believed and trembled. What
sets apart the believers from the demons then? I think what differentiates faith from belief is the commitment it
entails. Belief alone does not save, but
by grace, faith does. The two essential
elements of faith are trust and obedience. The quotes that follow relate these elements to the truth.
“Truth that is
trusted transforms.”
“Theological
truth is useless until it is obeyed.”
The first quote
comes from a seminar on leadership I attended. It was entitled Forming the High
Trust Culture and the second one is from one of my favorite authors, A. W.
Tozer. What they are saying is that
trusting and obeying truth affects change. It influences. It transforms. But we cannot trust what we do not know, how
much more obey it!
I remember
reading two instances in the Bible where people worshipped what they did
know. The first was about Jesus telling
the Samaritan woman at the well that they, the Samaritans, worshipped what they
did not know, unlike the Jews. The
second was about Paul’s conversation with the philosophers in Athens.
He pointed out that he noticed that they
had lots of objects of worship with one dedicated to the unknown God. The next thing that happened in both
instances was the proclamation that God has made Himself known to all. Jesus revealed Himself to be the Messiah
while Paul preached Jesus.
I believe
keeping the faith requires us to know what we believe in. My church’s senior pastor, Dr. Isabelo F.
Magalit, wrote, “To commit ourselves to Jesus blindly without being persuaded
that He is the truth is not faith but superstition.” This means that we must
first be convinced that Jesus is the truth to have faith, much more keep
it. In his book entitled First Steps Bible studies for new Christians
he stated, “Does the believer use his reason? Certainly, but as the equipment for understanding God’s Word, not as the
judge over its teaching.”
As believers,
how do we know what to believe in? We
have the Bible to guide us. But is it
reliable? Having a dad who asks this
very question urged me to search for the answer myself. The release of the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown caused friction within the family. Even though it is fiction, we had trouble
convincing him that its claims were not facts and I learned that disproving
them was not enough to prove that the Bible is true. This led me to buy a book entitled Can We Trust the Bible? by David Dean. It addressed questions such as:
1. Is the Bible historically reliable?
2. Has the Bible been accurately transmitted and
translated?
3. Does the Bible show evidence of divine authorship?
4. Is the Bible internally consistent and logically
coherent?
5. Is the Bible scientifically accurate?
6. Does the Bible pass the test of fulfilled prophecy?
7. Does the Bible demonstrate the life-changing capability
it claims?
As much as I
want my dad and everyone else to come to know the reliability of the Bible, I also
want him to know the Bible itself. I
don’t know why so many people question the authenticity of the Bible without
ever picking it up. One of my friends
shared that when we settle for others’ interpretation of what it teaches
without reading it ourselves, it is like accepting someone’s offer of a
hamburger which that person has chewed and spit out for you to swallow. The last time I was home, I challenged my dad
not just to know about the Bible, but to know what it says. He countered that he would like to witness
not just my knowledge of the Bible but how I live it. Maybe even bleed it.
I realized the
importance of being rooted in God’s Word only upon entering college. It kept my faith grounded in spite of having
atheist professors who baptized the classes they handled with their beliefs and
religious strangers who would feed you with wrong doctrine if you let them.
In my freshman
year in college, I took up Philosophy 1. My professor would drown us with questions class meeting after class
meeting. Of these, one stood out. He asked, “How do you reconcile that God is
all merciful and that God is just at the same time?” It never occurred to me to ask that until he
popped the question. I find it funny
that it took me years to learn that the whole Bible points to the cross. I mentioned this because the answer to a
rather difficult question is actually quite simple. It’s the cross. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, God
poured out His wrath on Jesus, hence, carrying out justice by punishing sin
once and for all. At the same time,
everyone who believes in Jesus and accepts Him as his personal Lord and Savior
is offered forgiveness of sins, thus carrying out His mercy.
Why do we live
in an imperfect world? Why didn’t God
just start over when man sinned? I
believe it was because of His mercy and His justice also. His justice required man to experience the
consequences of his sin, which included living in a fallen world, and His mercy
allowed Him to redeem us because we couldn’t redeem ourselves. His own hand brought us salvation. All that is required of us is to commit our
lives into His hands.
God’s justice
and mercy is just one of the many apparent contradictions or inconsistencies that
exist. Apparent means seeming or giving
the impression of. Investigating the
Bible ourselves would show us the centrality of its theme in spite of its at
least 40 different human authors over a span of about 1500 years. Someone said that there are no errors in the
Bible, only difficult passages.
One other
apparent contradiction that I often encounter is that of free will and
sovereignty. Free will and sovereignty
are like two sides of the same coin. How
would we know that God is sovereign if we do not possess free will? Why would He allow us to possess it if He is
not sovereign? I believe we have a God
who isn’t insecure about His sovereignty. He is that confident of His sovereignty that He allowed man to have free
will.
Yet another
apparent contradiction is that of suffering and of His goodness and
faithfulness. Why is there suffering in
this world? Why do we go through
hardships? They say that the answer to
these questions is similar to that of the existence of free will. God in His sovereignty allowed us to go
through suffering. God is more concerned
about our becoming more like Christ than our comfort.
I admit to being
guilty of doubting the Lord’s goodness and faithfulness sometimes. My latest struggle, which I am currently
going through, is about the possibility of not graduating this semester. It reminds of the time the Israelites spent
in the wilderness. God provided manna
from heaven but they kept on complaining in their ingratitude. Sometimes, I whine about everything that’s
going wrong in my life instead of being thankful for the multitude of blessings
I receive. What’s worse is that I even
blame Him and question His plans for me. But what’s really amazing is the way He responds to my tantrums. His steadfast love pursues me to return to
Him. He floods me with reminders of who
He is and what He has done for me. I
have come this far in my academic life, will He not sustain me? If we read the Bible, Israel’s
deliverance from Egypt is the picture used time and again to point them and us to God’s
faithfulness. In the same way that Israel was freed from slavery, believers are freed from slavery from sin, being
empowered by the Holy Spirit to overcome trials and temptations. The thing is, I had forgotten a crucial part
of the story of their deliverance. They
reached the promised land and conquered the nations in their path. Maybe I will not yet graduate this semester. I am still uncertain about two of my
subjects. I am still awaiting the
results of my exams. But will I only
worship the Lord when He blesses me? Will I place my hope in my circumstances or in who He is? I have learned that instead of asking why, we
could try asking, “Who are You, Lord, in this?”
He did not spare
even His own Son from experiencing the worst kind of death man has ever
invented. Christ took up His cross and
we are to take up our own crosses and follow Him. People often look at the cross and think only of suffering, but the past
year taught me that the cross was Jesus’ calling to save mankind. In His obedience to the point of death, God
was glorified. In the same way,
believers are called to fulfill God’s will even if it means undergoing
suffering. But the assurance we have is
this: We have a compassionate God who knows suffering not just because He is
omnipotent, but because He Himself experienced it for our sake. He is able to understand us and share our
pain. And like a flower that is crushed,
our fragrance rises to heaven and glorifies the Lord.
One other thing
I found necessary in keeping my faith in God is having intimacy with Him. I have come to ask, “What separates
Christianity from all the other religions?” I used to think it was because Christianity is a way of life, but it
turns out that most if not all the other religions also are. Each religion is a system of beliefs. But what sets Christianity apart is that it
is not just a religion, it is a relationship with God. It has a unique way of dealing with sin. God, in His holiness, cannot tolerate
sin. Man, sinful being that he is,
cannot approach God. No matter how many
his good deeds are, the fact remains that he has sinned whether with his
actions, his words, or his mind and heart. A man could be guilty of adultery just by looking at a woman with lust
or be guilty of murder just by hating his brother. Why is this so? Because God looks at the heart. It is futility to attempt to gain salvation
on our own because we can never be perfect, we cannot change ourselves. Even New Year’s resolutions are so difficult
to keep, how much more the Ten Commandments, knowing that if we fail in one, we
fail in all. Besides, why pay for
something that is free?
A verse in the
Bible says, “For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord.” When we sin,
we deserve to die. The death referred to
is not just physical death, but also spiritual death, which is separation from
God. Contrast this with eternal life, or
salvation, which is a gift. When someone
gives you a gift, what do you do? The
answer is to accept it. How do we
receive the free gift of salvation? By
accepting Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior. Another verse in the Bible goes, “Salvation
is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven through
which we must be saved.”
I made that
decision to accept Christ almost a decade ago. I asked for a change of heart. All the religious rituals in the world are
useless if our hearts are not right with God. My motivation in doing good deeds changed from
trying to earn my salvation to seeking to please God. Many times I have strayed, like the prodigal
son, but I have always returned home to the Father’s open arms.
One thing that
assures me of my faith is the changed lives of those around me who share
it. I have been so amazed just
witnessing how the Holy Spirit has been working in us, changing us to be more
like Christ, and using us in building each other up.
Going back to
keeping my faith in God, I cannot trust Him unless I know Him, not just know
about Him. And the one thing I can truly
fathom about Him is that He is unfathomable. Two rules in my study of (Artificial) Intelligent Systems this semester
about intelligence are:
1. Knowledge compensates for searching.
2. Searching compensates for knowledge.
Being a believer
doesn’t mean throwing away my reason. Rather, it demands that I use it in acquiring knowledge. Logically speaking, if God is infinite, His
attributes and everything about Him is infinite. If I am to know Him fully and if His promise of
eternity is true, I have all the time I need to be with Him and experience Him.
“Faith,” as A.
W. Tozer defines it, “is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of
experience… Love and faith are at home
in the Godhead. Let reason kneel outside
in reverence.” It takes humility to
accept God’s infinitude and everything He reveals about Himself through His
Word. If we could contain Him with our
ideas of who He is, He wouldn’t really be God. And if we were to wait until He proves Himself to us before we put our
faith in Him, He really isn’t God since He has to answer to us.
One of my
favorite books in the Bible, Ecclesiastes, is about the vanity, transience, or
meaninglessness of life apart from God. It
states that God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of
men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Even though we can appreciate things in their
time, we long for more because these things pass away. We seek something that is eternal. He is the only one who could fill that void
in our hearts, but we have the choice whether to let Him in or not.
And so I will
end in the same way that Ecclesiastes did:
“Now all has
been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
If God is truly
God, we are all answerable to Him.
