Proof, Truth, and Faith
Em July 27th, 2008
I am a product of Sunday School. Every week, I would bring my Bible and book and memorize my verses (sometimes in the car) with the hope of getting stickers beside my name, inching ever closer to the prize at the end of the year. I was at the top of the verse-memorizing pile, but when it came to crafts, my cutting and pasting fell short of the expertly stretched cotton balls of some of my classmates. What really knocked down my sticker count, though, was forgetting my Bible and book. I was a forgetful kid who could memorize with the best.
At some point in every class, my flannelgraph-wielding teacher would tell the Bible story. Jesus, always in white with a blue or red sash-like-thing, stood with a gentle smile on his face, hand outstretched as if he were teaching something. Peter always looked a little rough, John fairly composed, Judas dark and brooding, and the rest of the disciples came in an undifferentiated crowd of three or four. The story was one of many from the gospels; turning the water into wine, healing a blind man, preaching to the 5000, and, of course, the crucifixion and ressurection. There were Old Testament stories too, most memorably Noah’s ark and Moses and the ten commandments. Sunday School lessons often focus on Bible stories that involve animals; I suppose because they look cute and most kids like them. My favourite image from Noah’s ark, however, was one book that had a picture of people preparing food for the trip. For some reason, the most memorable stories of my childhood involve food; Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Bearenstein Bears book where Brother and Sister get fat, and the Power Rangers episode where there’s a big round pink pig-like thing running around eating pretty much everything it sees.
However, I don’t remember any of those verses I memorized. Some I do; I’ve re-learned them since, but most were forgotten ten minutes after I recited them. I confess: I didn’t really care about the verses. I wanted the stickers. I’m slightly competetive, and there were people in my Sunday School class that I just had to beat. I often did, but the sweet taste of victory is long gone with both the stickers and the verses.
Where, exactly, is the value of my Sunday School years? How does all that reflect on me now? Though some of it may seem superficial, I know a few things stuck with me. It gave me a basic understanding of the Bible and Christian doctrine, one that now almost feels innate. I may not be able to recite the verses, but I do know that I can convey their meaning. In junior high and high school, we got into more serious stuff, but the one theme that resounded throughout the years was the absolute assertion that the Bible is beyond question, and if we could just get a chance to logically explain it to everyone, it would be so easy for them all to see that Jesus is the answer.
This made perfect sense in my bubble of Christianity. But then I went to university. There, I realized two things. First, not everyone is an atheist. From inside the bubble, it looked as if all the “non-Christians” on the outside didn’t believe in God. In fact, in my experience, atheists are a relatively small minority. The second thing I began to realize is that most people have their own ideas about God, based on their own logic. Their reasoning questioned mine, leaving me scrambling to find another bit of information that trumped theirs. I sometimes succeeded, and sometimes failed. I gradually began to realize that logically explaining Jesus just wasn’t going to cut it, and was left in a crisis of faith. Doubts began to creep into my innate, absolute knowledge of God. I had a lot of questions, but I was never quite satisfied with the answers. In my polarized world, there was a distant knowledge of the meaning of grey, and when placed in the middle of it I was at a total loss.
My first conclusion was that there are more than two religions in the world; Christians and non-Christians. This idea implies that only Christians have thought it through and know what they’re talking about, and puts everyone else in a homogenized group. If I wanted to relate to people outside of the bubble in any way, I would have to see them differently. I abandoned the term “non-Christian,” seeing as it had little meaning to anyone who was one, anyway. My second conclusion was that logic alone isn’t a strong enough base for Christianity. This is not to say that there is no reasoning in my faith or that it lacks plausibility, but that it is exactly that: faith. “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see, (Hebrews 11:1)” it is not a logical deduction based on the presenting evidence. In this, I discovered the difference between truth and proof. Someone can prove something, only to have it subjected to a series of rebuttals until some kind of conclusion is reached. But is that conclusion true? If you believe in relative truth, I suppose it could be argued, but I absolutely believe in absolute truth. Proof can be disproven, disproofs can be wrong, but the truth remains the same.
Standing in the middle of a thousand conflicting arguments, I had to choose. I could choose the uncertainty of ever-changing proof or an illogical faith in absolute truth. Illogical faith: a term that I had never before considered. It was a gradual yet conscious choice as I took that path, one that was hard-won in many situations. On some issues, I’ve had to concede that I don’t know the answer and trust that God knows what he’s doing. In others, like the evolution-creation debate, I’ve started to look deeper, hoping to find truth in a balance of proof and faith. Ultimately, I’ve come to believe the Sunday School message I heard through all those years; the Bible is the word of God, and Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. But logic alone will not suffice in the pursuit of God, and will never be enough to convince someone to become a Christian.
“And without faith it is imposible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Hebrews 11:6
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