Faith is Not Blind

“I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reasons, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” - Galileo Galilei

One of the most abused concepts in Christianity is the idea of blind faith.  Belief, we are told, should be without thinking and without critique.  The predominant story today seems to be that science and religion are at odds, so belief should be separate from reason.  

When did we pick this up?  It couldn’t have been when Israel survived without any government but a court system of educated judges.  It couldn’t have been in rise of rabbinic Judaism when religious practice was determined by reasoned debate.  It certainly couldn’t have been in the early Christian church–after all, the apostle Luke described the Bereans as noble for hitting the books instead of taking the apostle Paul at his word.  And it definitely couldn’t have been from the beginning, when God expected people to figure morality out on their own before he had to lay a few bits down in writing for the Hebrews!  

If you are made in God’s image, that includes the ability to think and to reason.  Why would you not exercise these abilities?  Is your faith really so weak that you’re afraid of the answers you would find if you asked some hard questions?  

If you believe that science and religion aren’t compatible, it likely because you took some one’s word for it.  If you took a religious leader’s word for it, you should study the greater names of the faith in order to realize that such a stance is directly at odds with their expectations.  If you took an atheist’s word for it, you have let the claim of an atheist determine your religion for you without any evaluation of the claim.  Wouldn’t it be better if you used your God-given abilities of logic and reason to sort the claims out for yourself than to blindly accept the testimony of some one you believe to be wrong?  

No, blind faith isn’t much good.  “Ah,” you say, “But what of people like Abraham who was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac!  They had blind faith!”  No, in fact, they didn’t.  There is a better term:  Child-like faith.  At first glance they seem very similar, but loathe as I am to be mired in semantics, let me offer an explanation.  

Children do not have faith in their parents blindly.  No, while it is true that children trust their parents to keep them safe, choosing to put faith in their parents superior understanding and abilities in situations that would otherwise seem daunting or bleak, they do it with reason.  Children are able to do this because they have a relationship.  A child cannot prove that his mother loves him, but based on his relationship he can treat that he is loved as fact.  If he learns something contrary to what he believed about his parents, he does not suddenly doubt their love of him, but he reevaluates his understanding of them.  So it is with God.  

Though I take pride in the veracity of the Bible and the joy of miracles, they are not the bedrock of my faith.  They are important for corroboration and education, to be sure.  However, if they were all proven wrong tomorrow, my faith would stand on a relationship.  If you avoid science or reason for fear that it is a threat to your belief in God, perhaps you should take some time in developing your relationship with Him.  After all, how will you ever defend your faith against the accusations of the world if you are unwilling to use your faculties to discover the answers?