Why Do You Believe?

“It is I who made the earth, and created man upon it.  I stretched out the heavens with My hands and I ordained all their host.”  Isaiah 45:12  NASB

Ordained – Perhaps you’re familiar with the rather famous Evangelical apologetic book by Paul Little, Know Why You Believe.  First published in 1967, it is still a standard of classic Christian argument.  It answers all the questions—except the important ones.  Little’s approach is typical of Protestant apologetic philosophy (oh, maybe I should have said “theology”).  It approaches the issue of faith as if it depended on rational arguments, logical conclusions, and factual evidence.  Many other Evangelicals take the same approach, employing a Greek, rational epistemology as a weapon to convince the world (or the reader) that faith is the conclusion of examination.

The only problem is that faith is almost never the result of rational examination.  Somehow, faith comes first.  Arguments come later.

“Thus, awareness of God does not come by degrees: from timidity to intellectual temerity; from guesswork, reluctance, to certainty; it is not a decision reached at the crossroads of doubt.  It comes when, drifting in the wilderness, having gone astray, we suddenly behold the immutable polar star.  Out of endless anxiety, out of denial and despair, the soul blurts out in speechless crying.”[1]

Think of your own faith experience.  Did you sit down with a great logician, examine Aquinas’ five proofs, reflect on syllogisms, dig up artifacts, plow through ancient historical critiques, or even worry about transmission errors from Paleo-Hebrew to Babylonian block script?  I doubt it.  Heschel is correct:  “As long as we frame and ponder our own questions, we do not even know how to ask.”[2]

“ . . . the certainty of the existence of God does not come about as a corollary of logical premises, as a leap from the realm of logic to the realm of ontology, from an assumption to a fact.  It is, on the contrary, a transition from an immediate apprehension to a thought, from being overwhelmed by the presence of God to an awareness of His essence.”[3]

God’s revelation to Isaiah does not provide an explanation for divine existence.  It asserts the psychologically incontrovertible fact that we are not God and yet we are here because of His concern.  Every man experiences some slice, no matter how tiny, of the eternal, the pressure of the great question: “Why?”  But the answer isn’t arguments or creeds or doctrines.  The answer is an awareness of mystery, of something beyond me.

I’m guessing that you don’t believe because you are rationally convinced.  I’m guessing that why you believe has almost nothing to do with historical evidence, textual criticism or doctrinal consistency.  “Faith is the fruit of a seed planted in the depth of a lifetime.”[4]  Furthermore, if we’re truly honest about why we believe, we discover:  “The greatest obstacle to faith is the inclination to be content with half-truths and half-realities.  Faith is only given to him who lives with all his mind and all his soul; who strives for understanding with all being not only for knowledge of them; whose permanent concern is the cultivation of our uncommon sense, education in sensing the ineffable.  Faith is found . . . in a passionate care for the marvel that is everywhere.”[5]

“God is not an explanation of the world’s enigmas or a guarantee for our salvation.  He is an eternal challenge, an urgent demand.  He is not a problem to be solved but a question addressed to us as individuals, as nations, as mankind.”[6]

“It is the theoretician, who, rather than standing face to face with the mystery, holds his mental mirrors against it, making myths of mysteries, computing dogmas of enigmas and worshipping the image in the mirrors.  He does not seem to realize that idolization of ideas leads to an atrophy of the intuition of the ineffable; that God may be lost in our creed, in our worship, in our dogmas.”[7]

Why do we believe?  “We do not believe because we have come to a conclusion . . . or because we have been overcome by an emotion . . . . It is a turning within the mind by a power from beyond the mind, a shock and collision with the unbelievable by which we are coerced into believing.”[8]

May God save us from thinking about Him!

Topical Index:  faith, evidence, Paul Little, why, Isaiah 45:12

[1] Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, p. 75.

[2] Ibid., p. 76.

[3] Ibid., p. 84.

[4] Ibid., p. 88.

[5] Ibid., p. 89.

[6] Ibid., p. 92.

[7] Ibid., p. 98.

[8] Ibid., p. 73.