We have seen that even the greatest things such as love involve faith at some level; that is to say, they involve trusting things that you cannot see. You do not know all the qualities that your beloved possesses before you have married her, or had children with her, or grown old with her. It is a process, and just like all wonderful things, it involves trust and it takes time. A relationship with our Heavenly Father is no different. It is not always noticed that the kind of trust I am referring to in human loves is often seen as beautiful, whereas the same kind of trust shown in our Lord is very often frowned upon. 

 

I do not think that it is difficult to see why this is so. We do not admire very much a man with sharp calculating logic who uses it to deceive people, or, indeed, a man who uses his abilities against those who are weaker than him. We like all abilities and virtues (of which trust is one of them) to be commensurate with the things with which they are being given - thus it is not always surprising that some people frown upon people who put their trust in things that so called ‘wiser men’ would not dream of putting it in.  Once again, it says nothing about the validity of the thing in which the trust in being put; it says much more about human proclivities. 

 

As much as we have covered objections over the past few months, we should remember why we are covering them. It is so we can be well equipped to give answers to people who throw objections at us. It is not so we can go around all day trying to convince people that Christianity is true with good apologetic arguments; for when it happens, it very often seems like we are not so sure ourselves. You very often see those who are most unsure about their claims are the ones who are shouting out their differences the loudest. It is better that we tell people what we believe and how we have experienced Christ in our lives rather than constantly attempting to show, with apologetics, why it must be right. 

 

There comes a point, the point when the Spirit enters you, when you are no longer thinking of the existence of God in the same way that you are thinking of the existence of something beyond our universe. You are not speculating about God like you speculate whether the big bang actually happened. You are experiencing the divine for the first time. Therefore it is not surprising that those who claim to know Christ argue in a different way, perhaps even with a greater degree of certainty, to those who argue the other way. Furthermore, we do not think that a man who says ‘I know that God exists’ is anything like as foolish as a man who says, ‘I know that God does not exist’. 

 

There is a further point to be made concerning my claim last week. I said that we trust God because of our faith in His knowing what is best for us, just as, when we are children, we trust our doctor when he inserts the needle in our arm. This analogy is, of course, double-edged, for we sometimes trust things that we shouldn’t. We trust the doctor when he says it will be ok, but we should not have been so wise to trust a strange man who asked us to get into his car with the same advice that ‘it will be ok’, for the chances are we might come to some harm. So with this in mind, we have to learn to trust based upon what we know as well as what we perceive. I said that trusting God regardless was comparable to trusting your doctor with his needle, but as we have just seen, we would be unwise to trust without some prior knowledge of what we are trusting.

 

So how are we to reason this out? After all, we have seen that we sometimes put our faith or trust in things that we were all along right to trust and that sometimes we can put our faith or trust in things which later show us that we were wrong to do so. And sometimes outward appearances do not always help, after all, a clever salesman can be far more convincing than a trusted friend.

 

Here we have come to the real answer as to why we trust God. Despite the salesman being more passionate, having greater oratory skills, and having a more convincing way about him, we do not ever trust him as much as one of our close friends. It is very obvious why, our close friends have proved themselves in the past to be trustworthy and reliable - otherwise we probably would not have chosen them as friends. The same applies to our relationship with God. 

When we first get to hear about Him, we are treating Him almost like a new friend. We will read some Bible verses, find them helpful and rewarding, we may even experience the Spirit inside of us, but we cannot know even half of what there is to know. It will take time - and as time progresses we start to see that those verses which we found helpful and rewarding are now affecting every part of our existence. Our logic is often explained though them, our love, our rationality too, and later, we come to see that each verse can bring about some form of self-improvement at certain times; that the words of Christ can help us to become more like God. The strange feeling that was once our first epiphany is now the Spirit of God working in us in every way, changing our feelings to accord with the divine feelings, and bestowing upon us fresh wisdom and clarity. 

 

And every day that passes we learn to trust Him (just as we would a long term friend) because He has been revealing to us all along the methods in which we can grow in Him through our faith in Him. But there is one big difference, of course, friends, with the best intention in the world, can still let us down. God cannot; He is perfection itself, He is the perfect love. He is that which all friends and lovers try to be but know that they never can. 

 

And that is why you see so many people trusting firmly in Christ; because He has shown us many things which demonstrate how trustworthy He is. Of course He has not yet shown us everything, for if He had, there would be no need to trust Him further. I have a tattoo of Christ’s words - ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’ (John 20:29). His statement is not directed to those who are unsure whether to believe or not; it is certainly not advice on how to become a Christian; it is instruction on what to do once you have realised who He is. It was addressed to Thomas, a man who doubted but had, by then, come to realise who Jesus was. Christ did not come down on him too hard; in fact He seemed to treat him very tenderly. He was disappointed because Thomas should have known better than to doubt Him, and the same applies with us. 

 

Sometimes we doubt that God is with us or that He is even there, and then, before we know it, He has communicated with us, answered a prayer that we had forgotten about, spoken to us, or given us some divine wisdom. He has made us feel sad that even the first hint of doubt came into our mind. We were disappointed for even beginning to think doubtful thoughts. It is not just with the divine where this occurs. We all know what a horrible feeling it is to have doubted a friend or family member only to be shown how unreasonable or misjudged our doubt was. It is so bad that part of us almost wishes that they had let us down so we would not have to feel what we do now. And similarly, you know full well that awful contempt you feel towards the people who waited until you proved yourself before they proclaimed any faith in you, and equally, what a breath of fresh air those friends are who trusted you all along. 

 

The more we examine what faith is, and what causes us to believe, the more we see how feeble the claims of atheists really are. If we can see straight away that our faith should be given with caution (like we do with salesmen) - that is, if it is straight away obvious when we should be rationally cautious, it should be equally obvious that if all Christians are deluded, that this delusion will soon reveal itself to those who have put their initial faith in it, if, and only if, they examine their beliefs properly. After all, nobody wants to carry on believing something that they know for sure is untrue. At the very worst you have blind faith, where people believe regardless and refuse to listen to alternatives. 

 

Atheists have every right to question the Christian faith, but they are speaking foolishly when they claim that Christians believe what they believe simply because they hope it is true, or that they believe without any personal evidence. It is not testable on the outside, but neither is, say, an atheist’s feelings for his wife. But we would naturally conclude that if he is out walking and holding hands with his wife with a big smile on his face, kissing her cheek in a playful manner, there is a very good chance that he enjoys the feelings that he has for his wife. But just as an outsider cannot know the exact feelings that the atheist has for his wife, the atheist cannot know the exact feelings that a man or a woman has when Christ comes to live inside them. 

 

I can, for example, infer from the feeling I have for my own dog what another man might feel for his dog; that is, I can have some idea of what sensations are experienced regarding feelings of pet dogs, but it would be foolish to suggest that the same type of inference can occur when an atheist tries to think about the Holy Sprit entering someone - for there is no comparison that comes close. 

 

 

And perhaps this is a good message to close on. The more we exude Christ’s way of living in our own hearts, the more we behave like Christ, the more visible Christ is in us, the better others will be able to understand what it might be like if He too came to live in them - and equally, the greater the belief will be that we are, indeed, telling the truth. It is not usually great philosophies and great apologetics which convince people, it is behaviour and actions. The greater our love for our fellow humans, the greater our warmth, our compassion, our kindness, our solicitude, and our godliness are, the greater our impression will be on those who most doubt the Christian faith.

 

More next week….