Faith – An Introduction

My Faith In Christ

Personal Confession and Humility

As a Christian, the faith is strong while the flesh is weak, and so even as a Christian I am not without wrongdoings and am in no position to judge others. Even as a Christian I can make no claim to have followed Christ perfectly, or even that I have followed Him well throughout my life. I have stumbled, and I have fallen short more times than I wish to count, but I am always humbled by Christ’s unending love and His offer of forgiveness of my wrongdoings and that, by His grace, not only can I be, but that I am, once again lifted and made able to walk in Him—rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as I was taught—and in both my understated and abounding thanksgiving.

Who Christ Is to Me

My personal and spiritual relationship with Christ is that He is my Lord, my God, my Savior, my rescuer, my mediator, and my reconciler between me and God the Father. Christ is the bridge that spans the chasm of sin that once separated me from God the Father and a place within His Heavenly Kingdom.

The Work of the Holy Spirit

When Christ became all these things to me, the Holy Spirit was sent to baptize me and convict me so that I would be aware of my sin, to have understanding and the desire to repent, to walk in accordance with God’s will, and to become a Christian, a member of the Church established by Christ, and who are chosen as a people unto God.

Salvation by Grace Through Christ

I am not saved by my own works but by the works of Christ, who, being God, became flesh through the miracle of the virgin birth. Being born without a sinful nature, He lived on this earth in full deity as God and a full man, suffering and experiencing all that it is to be man and without ever committing a single sin. He was put to death on the Cross and then rose again three days later and ascended into Heaven, where He makes a place for those who believe in Him and call on His name as their Lord and Savior. Christ sacrificed His life to pay for the wages of my sin, and it is by His act, and His work alone, that I—and any other who is, or will yet be, saved—am saved. These truths are not my truths but God’s truths and are founded in Scripture and in the Gospel of Christ. Amen!

My Christian Denomination

My personal approach to Denominational Labels – outside of simply identifying myself as a born-again Christian – is that I am not one who typically applies denominational or doctrinal labels to myself. Nor do I generally apply denominational or doctrinal labels to others unless they first apply a particular label to themselves. Neither will I play the guessing game of to what degree a person follows, believes, or adheres to the denominational or doctrinal traditions and/or teachings that, in labelling themselves, they have identified themselves as following.

Thus, for example, if a person claims to be a Calvinist, then I am going to acknowledge them as a follower of Calvinism’s namesake, John Calvin, and therefore a follower of all his teachings, which includes the Doctrine of Election and Predestination as defined in the five points of TULIP.

No “Moderate” or “Extreme” Versions

Denominations and/or doctrines are very explicit as to their teachings and/or traditions and therefore do not have moderate or extremist versions of themselves. Calvinism, for example, does not teach a moderate four-point version of itself, nor does it teach some extreme version. Calvinism teaches Calvinism; thus, if a person who claims to be a Calvinist holds to only certain aspects of Calvinism but does not believe in all five points of TULIP, then they have mistakenly mislabeled themselves as something which they are not. That therefore becomes an issue that they need address and not I.

Taking People at Their Word

Regardless, if one claims to be a Calvinist, an Arminian, a Reformed, a Baptist, a Presbyterian, a Catholic, or a Pentecostal, I will take them at their word and as holding to all the doctrines, traditions, and beliefs that such labelling associates them with.

Faith Is Universal But Faith In God Is Not

Many mock the idea of faith, assuming it is nothing more than a religious construct, a foolish belief in the unevidenced and unprovable existence of God, a supreme Being who created the universe and all life within it. It is true that those of us who believe in God cannot provide any more evidence or proof of God’s existence than what God Himself has already provided through creation and life.

Everyday Faith: The Chair We Trust

However, even if we were to gain a consensus and included Evolutionism and Atheism as religions in of themselves, faith is still more than a mere religious construct. We all practice faith routinely even in so much as being confident and trusting that the next chair we sit in will not break. We all know chairs can break but we also know, based on our foundations of knowledge and experiences that the odds of a chair breaking are low. After all, if our knowledge and experiences dictated that the odds were against a chair supporting us, we would likely not have nor would we place any confidence, trust, or faith in a chair. Therefore, while faith, including my faith in God, is built upon a foundation of knowledge, faith is by its very nature and definition a confidence, or trust in in a person, thing, or concept that we do not have a full knowledge of.

The Limits of Knowledge

Mankind has accumulated a wealth of knowledge throughout his existence, and yet there exists more that we don’t know then there is that we do. All those things we claim to believe, including the origins of the universe and life itself, be it by evolution or by God or anything else, lie beyond the foundations and boundaries of our knowledge, and therefore fall under the category and definition of faith.

Competing Commitments: Unguided Origins vs. Design

Many choose to place their faith in the idea that the universe and life itself randomly originated and then evolved on its own. That the universe was at one time compressed to the size of atom or smaller, and then exploded in a “Big Bang” and from that, all the billions of precise conditions required for earth and for life to exist and then evolve just randomly happened without design.

Cosmology and Fine-Tuning Claims

To clarify just how much faith is required of this belief, unlike Kipling who does not account for all parameters required for a planet to sustain life, astrophysicists (Like atheist Carl Sagan) without even considering or explaining how life began, have been continually adding to a list of base parameters (conditions) that must be met – within tight limits of precision – for a planet to sustain life for any meaningful amount of time like that of Earth. That list which originated with two conditions is now at 200 and is still growing. Many consider this list conservative and place it more in the range of 322 parameters. Other mainstream scientists place the odds of a planet like Earth capable of just sustaining life is approximately somewhere between 1 in 10 to the power of 279 and 1 in 10 to the power of 388 (In clarification, that is the number 10 followed by 388,000 zeros) and represents less than a 1% chance of existence within our entire universe. These lists can be found at:

• Probability For Life On Earth
• Fine tuning Life on Earth

Biological Complexity and the Odds of Evolution

Then we are faced with the odds of evolution that conservatively (based on science and found on Wikipedia) sits at approximately 1 in 10 to the power of 40 (That is the number 10 followed by 40,000 zeros) and again does not explain the spontaneous appearance of life.

The Stakes of Belief and Disbelief

I can only speak for myself, but if I applied any of these same – less than 1% – odds to that of a chair supporting anyone, I would never have the confidence, trust, or the faith to sit in another chair again. It is for these reasons that I often argue that the belief in randomness, as in creation without design, without God, a belief in evolution, requires not only more faith then that of my own faith and belief in God, but a braver faith. After all, what do I lose if my faith is proven wrong in comparison to what others will lose if my faith is proven true?

Reasoned Faith, Not Anti-Intellectual

While I do not have a full knowledge of God and while I do not foolishly expect that ever I will, my faith in God is not without a foundation of knowledge, reasoning, nor is it anti-intellectual. I for one simply do not have the faith required to believe that if enough tornados were to sweep through a junkyard, that eventually one would randomly assemble a fully functionable Boeing 747. While I do not believe those who do not believe in God as unintelligent, I personally do not see how anyone could see anything other than evidence and proof of deliberate design and divine creation in the universe and in life itself. Thus, as much as someone can rightfully claim my beliefs are a faith, so too can I rightfully claim any belief – including disbelief in God – is a faith.

A Confession of Christian Shortcomings

Unfortunately, many of us as Christians have done a poor—if not shameful—job of presenting the foundation of knowledge God has revealed to us. This is often because we have been either unable or unwilling to seek God’s Word with all our hearts and with all our minds. I do not say this to elevate myself; on the contrary, I confess that my own ability to present the foundations of God’s truth and to articulate my faith is still far from where it ought to be. With humility, I want to keep learning to love the Lord with my whole heart, soul, and mind, and to give a reason for the hope within me with clarity and grace.

In addition to our own shortcomings, consider the following.

Not that it should be of a consolation – an excuse – but most unbelievers are no better at presenting consistency in the foundation of knowledge in which they base their faith in. For example; If we found a crystal on Mars that contained reams of information, would we not immediately think it came from intelligent life?

Yet a single strand of DNA is the ultimate information database, vastly bigger than all the cloud computing & personal computer storage media space on earth, combined, and yet, that is considered to have just randomly appeared?

How would we react if the Mars rover photographed two gears engaged, one plainly designed to power the other?  Would not everyone be clamoring to announce that the Mars Rover had discovered what is clearly a designed gear like mechanism and is therefore evidence of some past intelligent civilization?

Yet, as soon as I explain that the “gears” are merely a magnified view of a common Clockwork Bug with gear‑like jumping parts, the image stops being evidence of design and is treated as proof of the random chance of evolution. 

Being intelligent about our beliefs is not a bad thing. An intellectual grasp of faith is not ‘leaning on our own understanding but, rather, it is understanding what we’re leaning on. 

This underscores why careful, reasoned presentation matters on every side.