Your Big Question

This is one of the more common questions we get asked. As ever, we need to look behind the question to understand where it is coming from.

This question is based on certain assumptions. It assumes that religion, or we might say faith in God and the promises of God, is based on nothin that can proved. It assumes that faith is something like believing in a fairy tale. Religion is what we might want to be true, but has no basis in fact. Indeed it alleges that religion comes in a different category of truth (and a lower one) than Science. Science, the questioner argues, is the only way to really understand the world.

But, as ever, we need to gently ask is this true?

The question is actually based on a misunderstanding of the Christian understanding of the word “faith”. Christians understand the word faith not to mean just an unquestioning belief in a set of assertions or statements. Faith in God has three parts. We believe God is real. We believe God has made promises to us. And we have faith becuase we have experienced those promises being met and have experienced the presence of God. For us faith is much more than jut agreeing to a set of propositions.

 Second, is it true that we have blind faith – a very insulting way of putting it – and is it true that Science has all the answers – something Richard Dawkins claims? We can make a strong case that you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist. In this case faith in God can never be truly blind.

I’d also say that while Science is amgnificent branch of knowledge, it cannot explain everything. Science is bad at answering some very basic questions – why are we here? what is love and beauty? Scientific knowledge is never “the truth”. It is always the best available truth based on what we know at the moment. It is always provisonal truth.  So to somehow claim that Science has a monopoly on truth seems at least a little rash. Science is a way we understand things – but it is far less blacka and white than many laypeople think.

We beleieve that our faith is the light that lights our path – it isn’t jumping into the dark. We are called to worhip God with our hearts and our minds and many brilliant scholars have come to the conclusion that Jesus is the way.