What can you learn about keeping faith from someone who’s had a distinguished career in ministry, teaching, and Christian education? As he reflects, Dr. Michael Chambers shares three major discoveries of his own that could help you–or help you help someone else.
In a letter to his protégé Timothy, Paul the Apostle wrote of his concern that Timothy “keep faith,” and avoid a “faith shipwreck” that others had suffered (I Tim. 1:19). I grew up in in a Christian home where the Bible was respected and studied, and where churchgoing was part of the rhythm of life. The challenge of faith for me has not been to accept faith, but to keep it. The British Christian scholar C.S. Lewis could have had me in mind when he wrote, “Faith . . . is the art of holding onto the things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” Several discoveries have helped to preserve and strengthen my confidence in the Bible’s message over a lifetime. I hope these discoveries will help you as well.
When I entered college, I had a vague but growing sense of unease that highly educated people so often seemed to be religious skeptics, if not outright atheists—even if they had been churchgoers as kids. I wondered why. Does education lead to unbelief? If I asked too many hard questions, would my own faith crumble? Gradually I came to understand that many intellectuals were convinced that religious belief belonged to a previous period of history when people were naïve about human experience of the world. In other words, the Bible was “prescientific,” and so were people who believed it. At the same time, I was beginning to understand the significance of “worldviews” (unconsciously held assumptions about the world) by which everyone organizes and imparts meaning to the information we receive. In a class I took as a sophomore at Lincoln Christian College I was required to read The Making of the Modern Mind by philosopher and historian John Herman Randall. The book makes clear that the atheistic orientation of many modern scientists is not a necessary conclusion drawn from the scientific data itself, but rather comes from a wider cultural rejection of religion. I was particularly impressed by Randall’s insights when I realized that he was an atheist!
Discovery #1:
My worry that the more education people receive, the less faithful they become, was simplistic. My faith-keeping discovery? The real challenge to Christian faith is not objective information accumulated by scientists acting without bias, but rather the skeptical mental framework (worldview) within which many of them organize and interpret data (new and old). The atheistic element so prominent in modern culture has far less to do with scientific data than with an atheistic predisposition. And I discovered that Christianity is itself a robust worldview that incorporates all knowledge. As the author G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “Whether we are speaking of the binomial theory or pigs, we are speaking of God.”
Discovery #2:
My acquaintance with Randall’s book also illustrates a second faith-keeping discovery: Don’t avoid the hard questions; they are doorways to deeper faith. This is more than just intellectual honesty. In my experience, wrestling with those hard questions inevitably deepens my understanding of the world, of God, and of the faith. For example, probing the questions raised by the so-called “problem of evil” has helped me better understand how a good God can exist even when there is so much evil in the world. (To illustrate, see the article, “How can a Good and Powerful God Exist with all the Evil in the World?”)
Discovery #3:
A third faith-keeping discovery: The many books of the Bible make up a single, unified story of history that explains the whole world. I hope it won’t take as long for you to make this discovery as it did for me! The basic story of Christ, summarized in John 3:16, is so powerful that millions in every generation have forsaken unbelief to follow Jesus solely because of the deep appeal of the simple gospel message to the human heart. But the gospel takes on truly mind-boggling depth and detail when we understand how it fits into the larger biblical whole, a story that extends from the beginning to the end of the creation. This bigger picture makes it clear that the Bible is not just about religion, but life! Of the many resources that can help you get this bigger picture, see the compelling book by Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew, The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama.
May my faith-keeping discoveries help with your faith-keeping!
Dr. Mike Chambers
