There is strong motivation among Christians engaged in education and research projects to make the Christian belief in God as rational as possible. There is a strong underlying feeling among intellectuals drawn to the support of physical evidence for the establishment of truth credentials that whatever is true can, sooner or later, meet the requirements of the human mind to verify itself. This is presupposition that is imposed on Christians by secular society, even in theistic society for nature. If achieved it is presumed that there would be more persons numbered in the Christian context of society than there appears to be – even though believers represent a massive number of world citizens. The actual number would relate to definition differences. Only God knows the number of persons he accepts as meeting requirements for admission into his Kingdom. We need to grasp the factors that make for genuine context. This begins with Scripture to gain definitive treatment for the origin and meaning of Christianity as starting point.
Because humanism and theism are so large in the study of human life, neither can be written off in cavalier fashion – as many students of general society try to do. Problems arise early in that some persons accepting both humanism and theism, as well as those accepting one and rejecting the other, are guilty of rationalizations growing out of presuppositions. Deep concern of those seeking truth is to evaluate presuppositions to determine acceptability. If not the debate, the discussion, the conversation is not going to resolve intellectual conflict. It is possible that the intellectual conflict can lead to collisions in breaks from the search for truth, even broken relationships, perhaps leading to murder and warfare on personal and international stages – if breaks are large. The issues are divisive in that pride presses us to win (declared victory in clashes of human belief/conduct). World history is repetitive with examples of this statement.
In the approach to physical evidence and nature’s processes, all persons should accept the direction in which the evidence leads. Since God, residing somewhere in the metaphysical universe, gave us the physical, we must believe that he would not contradict himself by creating the collisions, the accidents, we have manufactured in the way we analyze ourselves, nature, and that which appears beyond nature. We know, from evidence, that there is something beyond our nature. It appears to be forbidding, even in such mysteries as radiation, some elements, life laws that offer continuity, and uncertainty even in such matters as energy, light source, time and speed, and the list lengthens for us. When we reach out too far, we are bound to rationalize for the areas about which we do not know, even those we will never know from the base of nature where we work in mind and body. There is something yonder that must be taken by faith. This doesn’t make faith the cover for ignorance, although it includes some of that, but does offer another approach in that the human experience of spirituality is a reality of many millions of persons.
So it must be managed in some way. Faith is all we have to address a reality beyond us. We admit there are those who, unable to form logical presuppositions about the extra-natural will miss the experience of faith that attracts a reality experience that we identify as spiritual. Faith that becomes the avenue of the Christian application has worked for numberless millions of persons for thousands of years. From it, whether it is genuine or not, there has appeared comfort, hope, peace, righteousness, love with care, a list of values that respects self and others, a protective context that offers strength against habits of life that reduce natural life in length and health. It advocates for discovery of righteous attitudes and actions related to health, learning, fellowship, responsibility, parenting, work, power, prayer, recreation – the story enlarges. There is nothing in the faith of Christ that does not serve human good. The call of values grows in faithfulness rather than fame, the spirit of equality rather than selfish orientation, the reality of freedom rather than privilege – that story also lengthens. Any faults found in Christian faith have emerged from Christians (genuine or alleged) acting badly, or from distortions critics. While we fuss about details of creation, and whether there were camels in Eden, the story of faith makes a better pursuit. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020