Faith is NOT Blind
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1
Is Faith Experience or Opinion?
There is a great misunderstanding of what makes someone have faith. Many people think it is purely a choice based on personal experience or opinion. But what separates a justified belief from mere opinion or experience?
Many Beliefs
A Mormon claims a “warming in the heart,” leading to belief in Joseph Smith’s testimony, who claimed to be a Latter-day Saint and wrote another testament. Mohammad said he was the final prophet in the Koran. Muslims are taught this is the truth. Unitarians believe all religions are basically the same, and it’s intolerant to claim there is only one way to God. Atheists don’t believe in God, yet often blame this ‘non-existent God’ for the existence of suffering.
Christianity is Verifiable Faith
Many beliefs do exist, but do they have evidence to back them up? Once thoroughly examined, Christianity remains the most verifiable faith—one that is not simply based on personal experience or opinion. The Christian religion is based on thousands of ancient historical manuscripts and archaeological finds confirming Biblical records. In addition to physical evidence, there are millions of lives dramatically changed by faith in Jesus Christ. And one must not forget the apostles’ personal eye-witness accounts of seeing the Resurrected Christ. Their testimonies have been shown to be reliable. This handful of people was used by God to plant seeds of faith that eventually grew to convert the entire Roman empire to the Christian faith. This is no “coincidence”—this is truth! All these facts together put the Christian faith in a category of its own: it’s evidentially based. This gives us confidence, as there are many reasons to believe.
Think Divinely: Faith was never meant to be blind. God has left enough evidence behind
for us to see and to believe.
Lisa Quintana is a Christian Apologist and blogs at ThinkDivinely.com. She is a former broadcast reporter and left her career to stay home and raise her two children. She also homeschooled her son during his middle school years, while earning a Master’s degree in Apologetics at Biola University (Dec. 2017). She now teaches classes at her church in Madison, Wisconsin, and has been happily married for over 26 years.
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