If I told you that I saw a two-headed hummingbird yesterday, would you believe me? Perhaps not. After all, nothing in your life experience has prepared you to believe that a two-headed hummingbird exists. You might think I was crazy, or perhaps had a little too much of the sacramental wine.
But then, what if you ran into two other people who said that they saw the same bird? They could describe how it looked, and it looked remarkably similar to the one that I had told you about. Sure, they may have seen it in a different location, but now you suddenly have more than one person who has seen something. Do you believe it yet?
What if, two months from now, you also have another person tell you that they have seen this two-headed hummingbird? You still haven't seen it, and nothing in your life experience tells you that such a thing exists. Now, however, you have heard from three people who saw it in a relatively close location and time, and then from another person at a different location, and at a significantly different time. What is your thought on the two-headed hummingbird now? Remember, you still haven't seen it.
The obvious correlation here is with the resurrection of Jesus. But we could also extend this to His miracles, and how God has worked in the world at various times. But because we are a people who have been taught by the principles that come from the age of the Enlightenment, we're conditioned to believe that proof is needed in order to believe something. If something cannot be proven, then it simply cannot have taken place.
Yet, in recent years, a new line of thinking has started to emerge from this "Enlightenment" kind of thinking. It is the realization that not everything can be explained or proven. While there is still a reluctance to make the connection to a personal God who has authority over all things, it has also come to people's attention that not everything can be explained or proven, and that there always seem to be exceptions to what seemed to be a hard and fast "rule".
There are things about our faith that will always be taken on faith. Jesus resurrecting Himself from the dead will be one of those, as will be His taking the guilt and shame of our sin upon Himself. Nothing will ever "prove" those things. Yet, when we see the scope of God's Word, how His servant would suffer and die as Jesus did, and as God ties the bearing of sin to His servant, the proof is that there is one who would undergo such things. Jesus underwent exactly what was foresaid. And since we see that fulfillment in Him, exactly as was told ahead of time, our faith is that Jesus did what He said, and took our sin and guilt upon Himself.
Likewise, there were quite a few eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus. If it were only one or two people, we might not take their word as proof. But the more people who witnessed the resurrected Jesus, in different places, and over a period of about a month and half, lent more credence to the fact that He did what He said. While we can never "prove" the resurrection, we can believe the proof of those who did see that.
There are always some things that we will have to take on faith, that we can never "prove". Yet, the more these are corroborated by other things that can be proven, the greater the foundation for those things that we cannot prove. Tomorrow I will write a bit about how we can have a tendency to stress faith for things that can be proven, and ask for proof for things that we simply need to have faith on. But in the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts on the tension between faith and proof.
No comments:
Post a Comment