Is Faith a Blind Leap?

To answer this question, let’s begin by looking at the word the Bible uses for faith. It’s common to make the mistake of bringing our own definition of words into the Bible. In this case, Christians who have grown up with the view that faith is blind instantly assume that the Bible is referring to a belief without knowledge or evidence (that is, “blind faith”). But when we take a careful look at the Bible, it appears to be saying something completely different about faith.

The word used in the New Testament for faith is pistis, which is commonly used to express “the state of believing on the basis of the reliability of the one trusted.”1 It can thus also mean “trust” or “confidence.” Note that it doesn’t mean the hope that something is true or the wish that something would be true—those are different ideas. It might reduce some confusion, then, if we just use the word trust when talking about this idea.

We use this biblical version of faith, or trust, all the time. Think about the last time you got into an airplane—you trusted the plane and the pilot to take you 35,000 feet into the air and then back down without killing you in the process. That wasn’t an act of blind faith, that was trust based on what you knew ahead of time about the safety of airplanes.

Or what about the last time you picked up some prescription medicine from the pharmacy? Normally, swallowing a bunch of powerful chemicals is a bad idea, but you didn’t bat an eye when you took them. Why is that? More than likely it was because you trusted your doctor to prescribe the right medicine, and you trusted your doctor because you know they had to study for years and pass rigorous tests to earn a license, or maybe because you’ve known your doctor a while and they’ve always taken good care of you. The point is that you made an informed decision based on what you knew.

This is much different from the “faith” a co-worker of mine had as he held up a new lottery ticket and shouted, “You gotta have faith!” This was not biblical faith, but simply wishful thinking. One of the dangers of viewing faith this way is that facts and knowledge become obstacles to what is perceived as the true faith. Lottery tickets aren’t nearly as fun when you start looking at statistics about your odds of winning. And for some people, religion becomes uncomfortable if we try to talk about it as fact rather than opinion. If we follow this view and say that faith is independent of facts, we basically admit that our faith isn’t real.

When someone says they believe in Jesus because they “have faith,” they’re making the mistake of thinking that faith is a way of knowing something. Faith is simply trusting in what someone has good reason to believe in.

Jesus, as it turns out, had no problem using facts to make his case, which he would not have done if blind faith was all he wanted. In John 14:11, Jesus tells his disciples, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.” In other words, they were to believe what he said in light of all the evidence he gave them, in this case, his miracles. He didn’t say, “Just have faith.”

In Mark 2, when a paralyzed man is lowered through a ceiling so that Jesus might touch him, Jesus first tells him his sins are forgiven. In response to some of the indignation in the crowd, he then says, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins … I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home” (Mark 2:10–11, emphasis added). To prove that he was qualified to forgive sins, he performed a miracle. No wishful thinking was required on that day.

The disciples also shared this view of faith. In Acts 2:36, Peter spoke to a crowd, saying, “Let all the house of Israel, therefore, know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (emphasis added). Peter is asking the crowd to look at the evidence, both from recent events and from Scripture, and believe based on those facts. First John 1:1 also speaks this way: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life … that which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you.” The implication here is that John and the other disciples are reliable sources of information about Jesus because they were actually there. He is asking us to take his word because he has the evidence.

It is clear that Scripture does not call on us to know as little as possible; rather, the more we know, the more our faith—our conviction in the truth of our beliefs—can grow. Hosea 4:6 says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Knowing less is not a virtue but a hindrance to our relationship with Christ.

Today Christianity is under attack in more ways and by more people than ever before. The percentage of young people leaving the church is frighteningly high. Unfortunately, many of them were raised hearing “Just have faith” every time they had a hard question. Our culture is pushing harder and harder for those with faith in God to compromise on their religious convictions. Now, more than ever, Christians need to know why we believe what we do. This way, when our faith is challenged, either by a tough question or a situation we never dreamed God would put us in, we stand our ground because we know our God is there.

Learning concrete facts helps to prevent us from viewing the gospel as a feel-good fairy tale. Believing that Jesus literally walked the earth, was crucified, and rose from the dead are nonnegotiables for those who claim to be Christians. If Christianity is true, then it doesn’t need to be a part of the Blind Faith Club, because all the facts, all the science, all the logic will support it—and as you’ll see later on, they actually do.

The study of this evidence for faith is known as apologetics. There are a number of apologetic chapters within this book. The field of apologetics has not only shown us that Christians don’t need to run away from evidence, but that the evidence gives us better reasons to call ourselves Christian than ever before.