Video Transcript: Questions About Knowing by Faith

Hi, I'm David Feddes, and I'd like to talk with you about some questions about  knowing by faith. In earlier talks, I've emphasized that faith is not just a matter of opinion or guessing or wishing, but faith knows. Faith is a way of knowing. Faith  includes and combines and surpasses some ways of knowing that are similar to  other forms of knowing that we accept. For example, when it comes to Givens,  some of the things we know we simply take as Givens, the notion that other  people are real we never do have their existence proved to us by logic, and it  could all be a dream, but we still take them to be real, and it is actually sound  knowledge. We take that as a starting point, not something that needs to be  argued for. We take certain forms of logic simply as a given, rather than trying to prove those we take two plus two equaling four as a given. We have a starting  point, and we use some of those things as a standard for other kinds of  knowledge. Now, when it comes to the things of God, there are things we know  by faith that are quite similar to taking some things as given. The Bible says, In  the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. We know by faith that  God made the worlds, and we just take that as a given. And we know that our  minds have an ability to grasp certain patterns about that world God has made,  and we take that as a given. And these are the beginning of all knowledge. If  you don't believe that your mind has the ability to grasp any kind of patterns, or  that the world has no patterns in it, then you will never get started knowing  anything. But you really can't take as a given that your mind has the ability to  discern or that the world has patterns, unless there is somebody who made your mind and made that world with its patterns. So faith has many aspects that are  simply taken as Givens, or what are sometimes called presuppositions. They  don't need to be proved. They're more fundamental and basic and foundational  than many of the other truths that are out there. Faith also has something in  common with our capacity for credulity. Credulity sometimes has a bad flavor to  it, in which you just believe anything you're told. But the fact is, most of what we  know is gained by believing what we're told, either by books or by reliable  people. Credulity is simply accepting testimony. And nearly everything we know  is accepting somebody's testimony. We didn't discover it for ourselves. We were  told it, or we read about it, and certainly, when it comes to the things of God, we  accept God's testimony, who has a more reliable word than God himself. And so we take the word of God and we read the Holy Scriptures and we believe what  God's testimony tells us. We believe what reliable Christian parents or Christian  pastors and teachers have told us. They may not, they might not be right about  everything, but if we're super skeptical and say I'm not going to believe any of it  until I prove it all to myself, we would end up knowing very little, because so  much is gained through the testimony of others. That's true in knowing the world around us, knowing the news, knowing scientific matters, knowing how to  conduct our lives around the home, knowing how to drive a car, we take what  other people tell us and show us, and not simply what we've managed to 

discover for ourselves and in the world of God's truth, we very often know things by believing what we're told by someone reliable. Another way that we know  things is through our faculties. We know things by seeing, by hearing, by tasting, by touching, by smelling. We we have faculties such as that. We have other  faculties that are mental, faculties such as deduction or induction, that certain  things about the past have occurred in a regular manner, and so we kind of  expect them to continue that way. And that's called induction. And there are  other faculties as well. And when those faculties are working properly in the right kind of situation, those faculties give us knowledge. So it is in the world of faith  God has given human beings a heart faculty for knowing him and for perceiving  Him. The Bible speaks of the eyes of your heart being enlightened. Your heart  has a special kind of eyes, a special kind of ability. Or what is spoken of in  Ecclesiastes as eternity in the heart of man, there's a capacity within us for  discerning something about God, and if that capacity is wrecked, it won't know  much about God. Just as if your eyes were poked out, you would not be able to  see very much. If your ears were destroyed, you wouldn't hear anything. So if  your capacity for knowing God, your heart eyes, have been ruined by sin, you  really can't know very much. But if you're born again and God renews that heart  capacity, the eyes of your heart, then you can perceive things of God and know  those things to be true. A fourth way that we learn many things is through  personal interaction, by people that we know, and we can't just learn about them by mathematical or scientific means. We learn through conversation, through  seeing how they react to certain things through learning about them and  learning to trust them. And so it is with God. Ultimately we know by faith,  because God comes to us and relates to us and draws our heart to relate to  him, and we live in his world and in the process of becoming part of God's team  and working alongside him, and he working alongside us, becoming part of  God's family, relating to him as children, to our dear Father, we come to know  more and more about God. So faith is not just some wild leap in the dark that  has nothing in common with other ways of knowing. We accept Givens, we  accept testimony, we accept what comes to us through our faculties. We learn  things through relating. And these are the means we have of knowing. And so it  is in relation to God, there are givens, there are testimonies given by God's word and by God's people. There are the faculties of our inner heart that God  enlightens, and there is simply the ongoing relationship with God by which we  discover more and more of him and of His ways. By faith, we embrace God's  interaction with us. We perceive his glory with our inner heart. We accept his  testimony. We take his written and Living Word as our starting point and our  standard by which we measure all other truth. And so Christians should not just  say, Oh, my faith is a matter of wishing, or a matter of how I feel, or a matter of  this or that we know by faith. And that brings up some questions, because the  moment you say that you know by faith, people wonder, Oh, I don't know about 

that. And here are some of the questions about knowing by faith. There are  others, but here are some of the more common ones that I've come across. Is it  arrogant to be confident in knowing God? Is it hateful to know that Jesus is the  only way and that other ways are not going to bring you to God. Is it judgmental  to say that we as Christians are right and others are wrong? Can you really  know that you have eternal life? Is faith ever unclear or unsure if it's real faith  and and real knowledge, is there any place at all in it for being unclear or  unsure? Why do we need faith if we have knowledge, if you know it, why would  you need faith regarding it? And a final question that I want to address with you  is, is it irrational to believe strongly, even in the face of contrary evidence. Let's  look at each of these in more detail. First, is it arrogant to be confident in  knowing God? If you are confident in knowing the things of God, and in knowing  where you stand before God, and in knowing what God teaches about right and  wrong, about heaven and hell and a variety of other things, people will say, Oh,  you are so arrogant. If you were humble, you'd be a lot less sure, and you  wouldn't say that you know these things well, let's take some examples. We  know the physical world is real. Would it be humbler to say that we don't know  it's not about being humble. If you know it, you know it, or we know Abraham  Lincoln was President. Would it be humbler to say, Well, I'm not so sure if that  guy Lincoln ever lived, or if he ever was president. No, we've had reliable  testimony from people and from books that Lincoln was once president, and so  we believe it. In fact, we know it, and there are no great amount of humility in  doubting that. Now notice, the physical world is a belief that is taken as a given.  We take God's reality as a given. It is not a matter of humility or. Pride taking it  as a given that God is real. We know Lincoln was president by testimony, and  there's no pride about knowing that we take God's testimony, that Jesus is his  own son and that he raised Jesus from the dead. It's not a matter of being  humble or proud. Whether we believe these facts, we know them to be true. We  know fire can burn flesh. Would it be humbler to be unsure about fire? It's a  matter of perception and how you feel that heat. Now, would you say, Well, I'm  just going to be humble about it. I'll stick my hand in the flame. Rather than  being so cocky about this idea that fire can burn flesh, I think I should find out for myself, and I think you should find out for yourself, rather than taking my word  for it, I wouldn't want to be so proud as to tell you I'm sure that fire burns flesh.  You'd say, what kind of nutcase Are you? You know that fire burns flesh. It's not  a matter of being humble or of being proud. It's just one of those things that you  know true enough. You know it by your faculties, by heat, by your own  experience, or by what others perhaps, have also told you about their  experience of fire. And it's a very valuable piece of information to know. If I know that hell burns the unrepentant forever. It is not arrogant for me to know that. It is simply a fact. If I know that certain kinds of immoral behavior damage people's  spirit and sometimes even their body, it may be a matter of experience. I may 

have gone through that myself, my own wickedness has harmed me, and I know it. And even if I didn't know it by personal experience, I would know it from the  Word of God. But there are things that we know by the by the eyes of our heart,  and it's if you've seen the Lord with the eyes of your heart and known him to be  real. It's not humble to say, maybe, maybe not. Humility has really nothing to do  with it one way or the other. I know my wife loves me. Would it be humbler for  me to worry and say, Well, maybe Wendy really hates me beneath all that  kindness she shows me, and all those years we've been together, she might just hate me. No, I know, I know absolutely that my wife loves me, and it's not  arrogant of me to know that I've got a great wife. It's not humble for you. If you're doubting whether your spouse loves you, that's not a matter of humility. It means either that you don't have a very trusting heart or that you don't have a very  good spouse. That's what it means. It doesn't mean anything about whether  you're proud or humble, the degree of confidence that you might have in the fact that your spouse loves you. She either does or she doesn't. Confidence is not  necessarily arrogance. That's the short version of what I'm trying to say. Just  because you're confident doesn't mean you're arrogant. You just know and  some things you can know. Now, why is it that some people would say that  you're being arrogant if you claim to know things about God or to know things  about right and wrong, it's primarily because we live in a society where there is  this false division, this false dichotomy between facts and values, and so it's not  at all arrogant to say that certain claims of science and mathematics are true. If I say I know that three plus three is six, and you're not going to talk me out of that. You don't say to me, Dave, you are so arrogant. You should consider the  possibility that three plus three is five or perhaps seven. How can you be so  arrogant as to say that it's six? I'm not being arrogant. You know, I'm not being  arrogant because you take it that certain claims about science and math are  objective truth and arrogance or humility, a scientist may or may not be arrogant, but you can't tell that he's arrogant just because he's quite certain about some  fact that he knows. But when it comes to the matter of the things of God, the  claims of religion, of right and wrong and of morality, there is this habit of  thinking that those are just matters of subjective opinion or of taste. And if  something is just a matter of taste or subjective opinion, then, of course, it's  arrogant to insist that you know it to be the case and that everybody else ought  to also consider it to be true. You see what's going on. If you took God to be real and the claims of the Bible to be true and accurate, then those things are  matters of fact, not matters either to be proud or humble about, so much as  simply to be known or not known. Knowing by science and knowing by math is  no more real, no more objective or certain than knowing by faith. Math, after all,  is still just a human set of symbols. That we use to interpret reality. It is not pure  reality itself. In some respects, the knowledge of God is more real and more  objective than math. And once we get that through our heads, then we will 

realize that it's not a matter of arrogance to claim that we know things of God, if  in fact, we really do know them. Now, of course, it's possible to be overly  arrogant, to be more sure of things than you should be if you really don't know  what you're talking about, but that if you really do know God, then you're not  necessarily an arrogant person. Is it humbler to be skeptical? Well, some people think so. The word agnostic is a word coined from Greek, and it means without  knowledge. And some people say, you know, when it comes to God, I don't think anybody knows. I don't know. And usually they take the next step too and say  nobody else knows either. And they call themselves agnostic, and think they're  quite humble in saying that I don't know. Well, let's take the Latin form of the  word agnostic. The Latin equivalent of agnostic is ignoramus. Now, an  ignoramus is a word that has a little less pleasant ideas associated with it than  agnostic. Agnostics are often taken to be old, very knowledgeable and  intellectual, but an ignoramus is considered kind of a dummy, but really, the two  words mean the same thing. They mean, I don't know. Now, if you say I'm  agnostic, are you humbly admitting that you're an ignoramus, that you don't  know things of God? If that's the case, then then just admit it. But don't take the  next step and say and I know that nobody else knows. You might be proudly  boasting that you're a brilliant skeptic. You don't know and you're very, very  smart. Of course, nobody else could know it if you don't know it, and you're  smart enough to know that. The fact is that some people who are very skeptical,  very agnostic, are very arrogant, because the fact that they don't know is taken  to mean that nobody else knows either. G, K, Chesterton spoke of a kind of  misplaced humility. He said, what we suffer from today? He was writing a  century ago, but it's still true, what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong  place. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the  truth, this has been exactly reversed nowadays. The part of a man that a man  does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert himself. We're all sure of  ourselves, and we push ourselves forward. The new skeptic is so humble about  truth that he doubts if he can even learn we are on the road to producing a race  of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. This was 100  years before postmodernism became very popular, where it's now said that  nobody knows anything very objective and so on. People are too mentally  modest to believe even in the basic facts of math, and yet they're very sure that  they want what they want when they want it. That's kind of a misplaced humility.  We ought to be much more humble about our own desires and urges and our  sense of how things ought to be and a bit less humble about the facts that can  be known if we pay attention to God. Next question, is it hateful? It's related to  the previous question. But instead of just saying it's arrogant, there are some  who say, Well, is it hateful to know that Jesus is the only way knowledge in  general, of things of God might brand you as arrogant in some people's eyes,  but knowing that Jesus is the only way means you're a hater of those who don't 

follow the way of Jesus. David Frawley, a Hindu person who has taken the name Vamadeva Shastri, says, in the modern world, we must recognize a pluralism,  not only of races and cultures, but also of religion, which means that Christianity  is not the only way such religious hate statements should no longer be tolerated, and the organizations promoting them should be challenged. Now, before I  move any further, no longer be tolerated. You get that Mr. Tolerance will not  tolerate any more of that. He objects to Christianity, and he refers to Christianity  says there's only one God, one book, one savior, one final prophet, and so on.  Most Christian missionaries try to get people to accept Christ as their personal  Savior and Christianity, in one form or another, as the true faith for all humanity,  a religion that is pluralistic in nature, like the Hindu cannot have such a  conversion based ideology. Conversion is a sin against the divine in man. As we  move into a global age, let us set this messy business of conversion behind  along with the other superstitions of the Dark Ages, we are all God. There is only one self in all creatures. Who is there to convert? And what could anyone be  converted from? The soul is divine. The soul cannot be saved. It is beyond gain  and loss. Notice what's going on. He is substituting his own doctrine, or some  doctrines that he's gotten from Hinduism, in the place of Christian doctrine. He is saying not that God is God, but that each of us is God, that we have no sin  except the sin of trying to convert people. So this is the case where we're  caught. If you're a Christian, you're called a hater because you think other  people should be converted. Now just a word about David Frawley. He's a  Westerner who's become a Hindu. Now Hinduism, some versions of it assert  that there are 300 million gods. Some forms of Hinduism In India, for centuries,  supported the burning of widows upon the death of their husband. You say, Oh,  one set of beliefs is just as good as any other set of beliefs. You know, you take  you Christians have your Bible say that true religion is to take care of widows in  their distress and to help out widows. Our religion says burn them. Hey, who's to say? Who's right? Well, okay, but let's not pretend they're both the same. There  is a very great difference between caring for a widow tenderly and loving her  and roasting her, the notion that all religions are the same. Versions of Eastern  religion and Hinduism say that if you are poor and down and out, it is because of bad stuff you did in a previous life, and so you should not be helped. It's just  your karma to suffer throughout this life. Christianity calls us to be kind and to  help the poor and the needy. In India, where Hinduism has been so powerful,  there has been a powerful caste system where the very lowest people in society are untouchable. No one will associate with them. These are the systems of  thought and tolerance that are supposed to bring us all together and help all of  humanity flourish. We must realize that all David Frawley and others who talk  that way are doing is trying to substitute their own religion for the Christian faith.  And the question is not who is being hateful or not being hateful, or whatever.  It's the question of which of those faiths is true. Now let's think about this a little 

further. Is it hateful to say Jesus is the only way of salvation? No, it might be  hateful to say we don't need salvation. Consider these words from the  Scriptures, the blood of Jesus, God's Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to  be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our  sins, He's faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all  unrighteousness. And now notice this, if we claim we have not sinned. We make him out to be a liar, and His Word has no place in our lives. If you say, I don't  need a savior, then you're saying, God, you're a big liar. You say, I'm a sinner. I  do not believe you. You Say You sent Your Son into the world and died for my  sin. I don't need him because I haven't sinned. It's hateful to call God a liar. It's  hateful to call God a liar. And there's another passage that speaks to that I John  5, we accept man's testimony, but God's testimony is greater because it is the  testimony of God which He has given about his son. Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Listen carefully. Any one who does  not believe God has made him out to be a liar because he has not believed the  testimony God has given about his son. So if we say we haven't sinned, we're  calling God a liar. If we say that Jesus is not the Son of God and the only way of  salvation, we're calling God a liar. And this is the testimony God has given us  eternal life. And this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. This is not a matter of me hating  another person. This is a matter of me believing what God says. God says,  Jesus is my son, and whoever has him has life. He who does not have him does not have life. That is God's testimony. And anybody who does not believe that is  calling God a liar. It's hateful towards God to call him a liar. It's hateful to call  Jesus a liar. Jesus said, I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Now it is more loving and more humble to  believe the All Knowing Son of God than to contradict him. It's more hateful to  call Jesus a liar and to call God the Father a liar than to believe the father's  testimony to his son. So it's a false accusation that just because you say Jesus  is the only way of salvation. You're a hateful person. No, you're loving God, and  you're believing him, and you're loving others. You want to know it's hateful. It's  hateful to block others from Jesus by pretending there are other ways that they  can be made right with God. The scripture speaks of being lost without  knowledge. It's not a loving thing to say, hey, it doesn't matter what you know.  You need to know the way of salvation. Proverbs 1 says, because they hated  knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, therefore they shall eat the  fruit of their way. The simple are killed by their turning away. Hosea 4:6, My  people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Romans 1:28 since they did not  think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a  depraved mind. Romans 10:2, they're zealous for God. They're all sincere and  excited. But their zeal is not based on knowledge. We need to know. We need to know the way of salvation in Jesus, and without that, we're lost forever. I'm not 

hating people when I say that I love them. I want people without Jesus to come  to know Him and to know Jesus is not a hateful thing, and to say that others  need to know Jesus is not hatred toward them. It is the most loving thing I can  do, it is the most loving thing you can do for people is to give them the  knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Well, another related question, is  it judgmental to say we're right and others are wrong? Well, is it judgmental for a parent who's teaching her child or going over some homework to say that she is  right, that eight times seven equals 56 and that her child is wrong, to say that  eight times seven equals 54 they're not being cruel, mean, harsh and  judgmental. They're just saying, honey, you're wrong. You need to learn the fact  correctly. Is it judgmental for a scientist to say that the Earth orbits the Sun and  to say the earlier scientists were wrong to say that the sun orbited the Earth,  you're passing a judgment. Of course, you're saying, Yeah, this is the right  position. That is the wrong one. But you're not being cruelly judgmental. You're  just saying that one thing is accurate and the other not. Or consider this one is it  judgmental for a doctor to say that penicillin will cure an infection and that a  patient is wrong to believe that snake oil will help? Well, snake oil won't help.  And it's not being judgmental to say that it is simply exercising a correct and  wise form of judgment, not a harsh and mean and misguided form of judgment.  We all have to make judgments. We need to make them right judgments. And  penicillin can cure infections, and snake oil won't. And a good doctor will say so,  and is not being judgmental, but is rather trying to help a patient. Now, this  notion that we really shouldn't believe in anything very firmly when it comes to  the things of God. In the world, it's called tolerance, but in hell, it is called  despair. This is Dorothy Sayers writing the sin that believes in nothing, cares for  nothing, seeks to know nothing, enjoys nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives  for nothing, but remains alive because there is nothing which it would die for.  What is often called tolerance is simply indifference or despair, not caring. And  it's a lot easier to just say, I don't know, than to really commit yourself to  something and stick your neck out for the living God and to take the risks that go with following the Lord Jesus. Next question, can you really know you have  eternal life? Official Roman Catholic theology says that most Christians should  not be sure of their own salvation. A favored few can know their eternal destiny,  but the rest can only hope and wait and work well. The Bible says God wants  Christians to know. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the  Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life all through that  letter of I John. We know. We know. We know. God wants us to know not just  facts about him and about Christ, though he wants us to know that, but he also  wants us to know that we belong to him, that we have been forgiven and that  our future glory is secure and certain. You can know that you have eternal life.  The Heidelberg Catechism says, what is true faith? True Faith is not only a sure  knowledge by which I hold as true that all God has revealed to us in Scripture, 

Roman Catholic brothers and sisters would agree with that, that what God  reveals is sure knowledge, but it's also a wholehearted trust which the Holy  Spirit creates in me by the gospel, that God has freely granted, not only to  others, But to me also, forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness and salvation,  these gifts of sheer Grace are granted solely by Christ's merit. So we're to have  this wholehearted trust, this knowledge that God has saved not just others, but  me too. Now is faith ever unclear or unsure? You've heard me talking about how we can know things by faith, and how we can even know our own salvation by  faith. So would that mean that if we're not quite sure of something, then we don't know it, or if we don't know it quite as clearly and precisely as we should, if we  know in some things, but we don't have the doctrinal details down very precisely, then, is it not real faith? Well, Jesus would often say to His disciples, you of little  faith. And he would even rebuke them for being people of little faith, but he did  not say, You of no faith. Most of us, in some circumstances or another, are  people of little faith. Our knowledge is not very large. There is much more that  we still need to learn, and even what we do know is sometimes held quite  loosely or with a lot of doubt and struggle. So there are people whose faith is  real faith, but it's still somewhat unclear, at least at times, somewhat unsure to  them, at least at times, little faith might not see clearly or know surely. But even  though weak, it may be real faith. Even weak faith may hold real knowledge. We know things with varying degrees of clarity and certainty. We might be unclear  on some points, and yet have still real knowledge. We might be unsure at times,  and yet truly know, although not knowing yet with absolute full certainty. So it is  a goal to be sought that our certainty increase. It is a goal to be sought that our  knowledge, the range of our knowledge, the accuracy and precision of our  knowledge, should continue to grow, so that we don't just have little knowledge,  but great knowledge, that we have not just small and weak assurance, but  stronger and stronger assurance. But do not become discouraged if your  assurance is still kind of weak and if your knowledge is still kind of small, if you  know that Jesus saves and if you go to Jesus even with hesitations, even with  some uncertainties, he will surely save you. If you study the Bible, and you  sometimes have your questions about the Bible, and you sometimes have your  difficulties understanding the Bible, but you keep going to God's word, then you  have a genuine faith in God's promises and in His truth, and as you keep  searching, he will give you more and more Understanding and more and more  assurance and certainty. Another question, why do we need faith? If we have  knowledge? Some people say, Well, if you know it, you don't need faith. Well,  let's think about that a little bit knowledge is not just a thing. It's not just  something you can store in your mind, like a bike in a garage. In other talks,  we've we've looked at how various things can shape our knowledge and how we hold how we come to knowledge in the first place, and whether we continue to  hold on to it. Your social setting shapes your knowledge, your actions and your 

heart. They all reshape your mind, and they change what you previously thought that you knew. And so we need faith, because sometimes we get into a different  social setting, and instead of being with Christians all around us, we may be  among people who don't believe what you believe and what we knew when we  were in a certain social setting will. Fade away unless we have the commitment  and the knowledge that comes through faith, and not just from having a fact that  came to us in a certain social setting. Actions are important, and if faith  motivates us to keep acting on God's behalf, then we will be the kind of people  who are continually drawn to the light, instead of being the kind of people whose actions are constantly splattering mud on our windshield and making it harder  and harder for us to see and to know the things of God. Jesus said people love  darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Faith keeps us pursuing good deeds, and in doing so, it gives us a preference for light instead of  darkness, it opens up our knowledge. If our heart is completely amiss, then we  can't know things, and faith is what keeps our heart in tune with God. It keeps  our knowledge going. So in some ways, we may tend to think that knowledge is  a very stable thing and faith is weaker. But it might turn out to be the opposite  that knowledge is something we can have by faith, but without faith, that very  knowledge would tend to slip away from us. If you lack faith in God, your  knowledge can be overthrown by Satan at any time. C S Lewis writes that  reason may win truths by reasoning, we can discover certain things to be true,  but without faith, reason will retain them, will hold on to them, just so long as  Satan pleases. There is nothing we cannot be made to believe or disbelieve.  There are people who reject the idea that God created the heavens and the  earth. Some very famous scientists say that God did not create the heavens and the earth, but the world could not simply have evolved. So life was put here by  extraterrestrial aliens. Now, how can you believe in UFOs and aliens coming  and putting life on Earth, but say it's ridiculous to say that God created the  heavens and the earth. Well, Satan can make you believe or disbelieve  anything. I know of persons who are biologically totally and completely male,  who grew up that way, who have fathered children, and who say, but I'm really a  woman on the inside, you can be made to believe anything totally contrary to  biology, totally contrary to all observable facts. If we wish to be rational, not now  and then, but constantly, we must pray for the gift of faith, for the power to go on  believing not in the teeth of reason. Faith is not fighting against reason, but in  the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference to keep  on believing that which reason, authority and experience or, all three have once  delivered to us for truth. So in our most rational moments, we can see that God  is real, and as we think about them very clearly and logically, we may find that  many claims of Christianity are well substantiated, but then our own desires kick in, our own fears and terrors and and just boredom kick in, and all of a sudden it  seems unreal to us, and that's why we need faith to maintain what we know. 

Next question, is it irrational to believe strongly in the face of contrary evidence? Sometimes people bring up things that seem not to support the truth of  Christianity. One of the commonest arguments is, if there's an all powerful and  all loving God, don't you think there would be no suffering and trouble in the  world, or at least a lot less of it. That seems to prove that there is an all powerful, all loving God. Or you may have someone who presents What is taken to be  evidence that some statements in the Bible are unreliable. Or they may say, hey, Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, and here are some reasons that we think  it's ridiculous to think that he rose from the dead. And so should you keep  believing strongly, even in the face of contrary evidence? Should you go purely  by evidence? So if the evidence supports Christianity, you believe it, but if there  seems to be evidence against it, then you don't believe it. And if there seems to  be about equal evidence, then you just kind of say, Guess, I can't make up my  mind. Well, if you're a Christian and you believe strongly, even when people  bring evidence to you, it doesn't mean you're irrational. Would it be irrational  believe you didn't commit a crime, even if lots of evidence seemed to point in  your direction? Now, it's easy, of course, for somebody to lie and say they didn't  commit a crime, but if you didn't commit a murder, and you know you didn't do it, and somebody's trying to frame you, and a lot of evidence has been presented  that you did it. Would it be rational for you to say, well, got to be a guy who goes  with the evidence. So yeah, I admit it. I did it. No, no amount of evidence can  overrule what you absolutely know based on what you know. Of your own  experience. You didn't do it, you know you didn't do it, and this and that piece of  evidence is not going to prove it. Now the same is true once you've come to  know God, once God has revealed Himself to you and showed you your own sin and your need of a Savior, and God has implanted his life in you and given you  a faith and trust in Jesus, it is not irrational to continue having faith in that Lord  and knowing him to be real, and knowing Him to be your savior, even if various  things happen that seem to go contrary to that, because you know what you  know. Would it be irrational to believe in a dear, wise, capable friend, even if  things happened that you couldn't understand or explain, you might have a  friend who's very shrewd and who is extremely wise and has to do some things  that seem very strange, but you know that he's smart and you know that he  loves you, And you simply, at times have to say, I don't know what he's up to, but I trust him. And if evidence is brought forward, no, no, he's up to no good. Now,  in human life, it might turn out that some people you trust are up to no good, but  very often, if you really know somebody and you know them deeply and you  trust them, then the rational thing to do is to keep on trusting them, even if things happen that you can't figure out. And so it is with God. Once you come to know  Him, to know him as father, to know that he loves you, to know that he has your  best interests in mind, and to know that His ways are sometimes pretty  mysterious, then you trust Him, even when evidence seems to point in a 

different direction, believing evidence so called evidence rather than God, it  might not be evidence of rationality on your part. It might show disloyalty. God  might say to you, you should have known me better if someone were to accuse  my wife, some stranger would accuse my wife of something. Should I just  believe that stranger the moment they trot out a little bit of evidence that would  not be fair to my wife. I've known her for years. She's loved me for years. It  would be foolish for me to take one little shred of evidence as reason to overturn everything I know of her. And to throw out the whole relationship, it is sometimes perfectly wise and rational to strongly believe in someone, even in the face of  some evidence to the contrary. And part of this comes down to just different  ways that we know things. Some things we know by material analysis. We  examine a thing. You can measure it, you can control it, you can dissect it, and  so you just analyze it. But other kinds of knowledge come by acquaintance,  personal acquaintance. You understand what a person is thinking and feeling  through your interaction, and you know how that person regards you. And this  kind of knowledge depends on the other person's revelation towards you and on your receptivity to what they're showing you. So we know things by personal  acquaintance that we can't get just by dissecting you can't know much about me by just killing me, dissecting me and cutting my brain up. You would cut you  would learn a few things about my anatomy, you would learn very little about  what makes me me. You'd learn a lot more just by listening to me talk and  having a conversation with me than by trying to slice and dice and Analyze Me.  And it's certainly that way. In relation to God, we know nothing of God unless he  shows himself to us, and unless we're receptive to what he shows us, it makes  sense to believe strongly in the Lord despite evidence. And here are a couple of  further reasons to say so our minds are too small to figure God out. Isaiah 55:9  says, For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than  your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. If God would fit between your  two ears in that little space inside your skull, if your little brain could figure out  the infinite God, then he wouldn't be God. The fact is, God's ways are far  beyond ours, and so sometimes we just say, Lord, I'm going to humble myself  like a little child. I'm not going to concern myself with things too great for me. I'm  just going to trust that you know what you're up to because you've shown  yourself to be a loving and faithful father to me, and I'm going to trust that's not  irrational. That's just knowing who God is in comparison to us. Another thing to  keep in mind, our minds are too fickle to hold out against Satan without God's  help, and so we need to believe in the face of contrary evidence, because Satan is going to bring contrary evidence. False Christs and false prophets will appear  and perform great signs and miracles to. Deceive, even the elect. If that were  possible, God's elect, God's chosen, cannot be deceived and lose their  salvation. But if it were possible, the kinds of things that Satan can pull would do the job. And so we need to understand that, of course, there's going to be 

evidence and arguments against the truth of the Christian faith, and evidence  that seems pretty strong, because Satan is always at work trying to manufacture and provide such evidence. So we need when we have faith and we've come to  know God and to know the things of God, to believe sometimes when evidence  seems to point in a different direction, faith involves knowledge by acquaintance  with the living God and knowledge, unfortunately, by some form of acquaintance with the devil and his schemes and continually being alert and wary against his  temps attempts to deceive us or to lead us away from Christ. So those are some of the questions we've looked at. Is it arrogant to be confident in knowing God,  not necessarily. God wants us to be clear and sure in our knowledge of him. Is it  hateful towards others to know that Jesus is the only way? No, it's hateful  towards Jesus and God to say he's not the only way, because God says that He  sent His Son into the world to save us that we're sinners who need that  salvation. Is it judgmental to say that we're right and others are wrong? It can  be, but not necessarily. What if we are right and others are wrong? It's not  judgmental. It's simply stating the facts, and we might be stating those facts in  order to help others discover more truth. Can you really know that you have  eternal life, you certainly can, and God wants you to know, is faith ever unclear  or unsure? Yes, and at certain times, we have to pray like a man who spoke to  Jesus, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. We do have a real faith, but it  sometimes is shaky, unclear or unsure. And so we say, Lord, I do believe, but  I'm a person of little faith. I believe Help my unbelief. Why do we need faith if we  have knowledge well, because Satan can get us to believe just about anything if we don't have faith and firm commitment, and because our minds can change  very easily without the help that comes to us from God when we put our faith in  him. Is it irrational to believe strongly in the Lord, even in the face of contrary  evidence. Yes, it is because God's ways are not always our ways, and Satan  would dearly love to give us misleading evidence that would lead us away from  our Lord and Savior. So there are these questions about knowing by faith, and in the face of them, all we can say we know I John 5 says, I write these things to  you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you  have eternal life. We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin.  We know that we are children of God and that the whole world is under the  control of the evil one in this day and age. That would sound like a very  judgmental, arrogant statement, but it's the truth. We know that we are the  children of God and that the unbelieving world is under the control of the evil  one. Jesus tells us that, and so we know it. We know also that the Son of God  has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is  true, and we are in Him who is true, even in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God. He is eternal life.