Faith is a Virtue
By Brian Forbes
© 2012 Brian Forbes
Those in science often say that we ought to doubt
everything. There’s no question that
scammers make their living on the trusting.
It is healthy in this fallen world to maintain a measure of doubt.
My grandmother is getting very old. She has started to lose her memory, and it
can be interesting to hear the connections she makes when I talk to her about
our past together. A few years back, she
was befriended by a man who was more or less than a couple decades younger than
her. They fell in love. My aunts, uncles, and dad weren’t so
convinced of his pure motives. Sure
enough, the first chance he got, he ran off to Vegas with her and they were
married. He was quoted as bragging that
he was about to marry a rich widow, and he was about to come into a nice
inheritance. Needless to say, we were
all concerned, and there were those in our family with sense enough to ignore
the letter of the law and break her out of this prison she found herself
in. Little did the old groom know, the
money wasn’t being controlled by his feeble bride anymore, and he wasn’t going
to get any of it anyhow. In the end, the criminal system worked. It ignored the actions of my family members
and annulled the marriage without the consent of my grandma. To this day, when she talks about her dead
husband, we don’t know which one she’s referring to.
That guy was a scammer. He was a liar. He was a thief. He wasn’t worthy of any of our faith. We were right to doubt his motives. My grandma’s faith, or trust, was not a
virtue in this case.
You see, faith is not always a virtue. Doubt isn’t always a virtue either. It all depends on who or what your faith is
in. It’s the object of your faith that
will show, in the end, whether you were right or wrong, in good faith or in
danger.
So, is faith in Genesis a vice or a virtue? Is doubt in Genesis a vice or a virtue? The answer is that you can’t start
there. If you start there, you’ll be
like my grandma, not really discerning true motives. You have to start a little closer to
you. You have to trust the people who
present the arguments to you. You have
to trust their sources, their presenters, and the documents they use for
evidence. We’re building a ladder of
trust that goes back through generations, through copies of copies, through the
history of mankind back to the beginning.
Every generation between now and the source will have had to ask these
same questions. They will have had to
trust that what they were given was either true or false. Let’s face it; Genesis is a long time back.
We have to trust.
It seems so hard to trust when anyone along the way could have fudged
the numbers or tweaked the details. Are
there any solid nodes of reliability as we trace our understanding through the
pages of time? I believe, yes, there are
many such reliable islands in this sea of blind faith. I would start with the modern publishers. They all seem to be consistent in the text
they give us. The English translations
are all, with slight variation, proof of a common source. I would take the modern publishers back to
the first official English translation, the KJV. I’m told that the group that got that
translation together was seriously iron sharpening iron. The next island goes back through the various
other language translations throughout late history back to the Latin Vulgate,
translated by Jerome in 382. I think
this has to be among the most solidly attested facts of history, especially for
its time in history. You can take it further
back through some early churches and translations to what are considered to be
eye witness accounts of Jesus. Of the
four gospels, two, Matthew and John, were purported to be among the 12
disciples, Mark was supposed to be the scribe of Peter, and Luke was a
researcher under Paul. I’m glad we have
four accounts, because even if one is wrong, forged, or not on good authority,
at least we can hope in the other three.
Now, we’re to the solid rock that is Jesus. I’ll assume that most of my audience will not
have a problem accepting the historical nature of the figure of Jesus. I believe it takes more faith to ignore the
solidity of the testimony of Jesus than it does to accept it.
I’ve done a rough sketch through history of the amount
of faith that is required for you to believe in the historic Jesus. Once you get to Jesus, the faith measuring
cups start to get much larger in your world view recipe. Did he walk in water? You have to take the testimony of the guys
who saw it happen. Did Paul become blind
and hear a voice before he was healed of his blindness and believed? You’ll have to take his word on that. Most importantly to this article, was Jesus a
Jew? I think there’s overwhelming
testimony in every source that He placed himself under the authority of the
courts set up by Moses. He told people
who asked him questions to consult Moses.
He said that he didn’t come to abolish the Law of Moses or the prophets;
he came to fulfill them. He kept the Law
of Moses. Only slightly more faith would
be measured for the fact that he accepted the stories given by Moses as
historical accounts. He talked about the
flood as though it happened and a future judgment that will be similar in more
ways than one. There is a further
testimony to this in that the author of Hebrews, who presumably knew people who
knew Jesus, if he didn’t know Jesus directly, laid out in Heb. 11 that the
stories of Genesis are accurate accounts of history. I have placed my faith in these
testimonies. I have found a solid island
of truth to trust in. I value this
choice more than many other faith issues in my life.
As I write this, it’s campaign season. There are many political candidates trying to
get me to believe in them. They want me
to trust their record, their ability, and their promises. I have seen people with faith all over in
this campaign vying for their favorite candidate. Their faith is sometimes well founded,
sometimes thoroughly researched, and sometimes voters have a blind faith in
their candidate. There are varying
levels of faith and doubt for each voter, but one thing is clear, if you vote,
you are exercising faith.
I bring in politics to show that it really doesn’t
matter who you are, you have to trust someone.
If you accept the testimony of one person, you’re denying the testimony
of others. If you choose to accuse, you
are showing your doubt. It’s impossible
to be empirical about politics, a thing we can research always, never pausing
for a breath, and we’ll still end up having to trust someone.
So, why do I say faith is a virtue? Empirical evidence does exist. There’s no doubt of that. I saw on TV a woman pick up a phone that was
unplugged, act like she was talking to someone on the other end, and hang
up. The guy pointed out that the phone
was unplugged, and she responded, “Are you calling me a liar?” “I don’t know what to say.” The evidence, when it’s solid, does the
talking for you. But why doesn’t an all
powerful God remove all doubt? It would
be easy for God to show the chord of the unplugged phone. I would respond with a couple things. One is that we’re not done yet. Maybe He still will. The other is that there is no faith when you
have perfect empirical evidence. I
believe faith is a virtue… a virtue, that is, when it’s placed in the proper
object.
Why did God invent work? He could do everything so nothing ever needed
to be done. Working
for people shows love. Why didn’t
He make space in such a way that you could get anywhere in an instant? My answer is twofold. One is that He isn’t finished yet. The other is that the joy is partly found in
the adventure. Could you imagine the
Hobbit that started with the ring at the Shire and ended with the fires of Mt.
Doom? Why does God require faith? Haven’t you ever heard the question, “Don’t
you trust me?” It feels good to have
someone trust you. It shows love. God wants to be trusted, and who can blame
Him? Why does God use prophets? I think that if He revealed it to us
directly, we’d have to trust ourselves.
There’s no great virtue in that.
We all trust ourselves. It’s
doubting ourselves that we need to do a little more of. He likes when we trust those that He has put
his trust in. We need to love God’s
servants, just as He has done.
One final thought.
This world is set up in terms of trust or faith largely because it’s
where we went wrong in the Garden. We
showed there that at least the first man and woman didn’t believe God and would
need to develop that trust. I believe
the world is one huge empirical experiment.
There have been times in history were the people knew nearly nothing
about God. There are regions where the
culture is driven by guilt and shame, whereas others are concerned with forgiveness. It doesn’t matter who you are, your lot in
life is entirely unique, yet there will always be others you can compare
yourself to. We are in the age of
knowledge, and, regrettably few spend their time researching things that really
matter. Who can accuse God? Who can make excuses? We have empirical evidence that God is
faithful. He is a man of His word, if
it’s lawful to call him a man. The best
we have in this world is to prove our pukefulness. We can lend our faith to our politicians and
our skeptical friends. If we place our
faith there, our faith becomes a vice.
Anyone who places their faith in God embodies the essence of virtue.