“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1 (KJV)
Equating faith with evidence is not an oxymoron
Our Western culture has divorced faith from reality: truth, it says, is what we can discern with our five senses, while faith is just wishful thinking. So when we read in Hebrews 11:1 that faith produces evidence, our kneejerk reaction is, “What?” So in this post I am going to disabuse us of this false dichotomy between faith and evidence and clarify what the term “faith” means in the context of Hebrews 11.
I like to think of faith in four different ways, and I have written posts about them: ordinary faith, evidence-based faith, saving faith, and proven faith. In this post, I’m going to focus on the first two.
Everyone practices ordinary faith every day. When we drive through a green traffic light, when we step on a plane, when we eat food at a restaurant, all of those acts are examples of us practicing ordinary faith. Without ordinary faith, it would be impossible for us to function. We would just curl up in a fetal position and not be able to get out of bed.
In addition, as we practice ordinary faith, something happens. It leads to the second type of faith: evidence-based faith.
I am going to use three stories to discuss how, when we exercise ordinary faith, it becomes evidence-based faith because faith always produces information, whether good or bad information, about the person or thing we are trusting in. In other words, faith that is acted upon always becomes evidence of something.
And finally, I want to apply what we learn about how ordinary faith leads to evidence-based faith to Hebrews 11.
A brake job and a terrifying drive home
Slauson Avenue cuts like a knife through South Los Angeles all the way from Whittier on the east to within a couple of miles of the Pacific Ocean on the west. I grew up in a home one block off of Slauson Ave. toward the western end. At that location, Slauson begins a steep incline up a long hill and at the top of the hill was a gas station. I was sixteen and had proudly acquired my first car; a used Datsun 411 that needed a brake job. In those days, gas stations often had a mechanic and service bays and the gas station at the top of the hill was one of them.
I knew nothing about the mechanic that worked there, but I drove my Datsun up the hill and left it there to be repaired anyway. I walked back down Slauson Avenue, feeling proud of myself for not having to ask my dad for advise. Late that afternoon, I walked back up Slauson, paid the mechanic, and started driving my car down the hill.
But at the bottom of the hill was a signal and it turned red. I stepped on the brake pedal and made a horrifying discovery. I had absolutely no breaks. I pumped the pedal multiple times. Nothing. Fortunately, I remembered to use the emergency break and was able to bring my car to a stop just in time.
I had put my faith in a total stranger to do an important job that had life and death consequences. I knew nothing about him but trusted him anyway. In this case, my faith produced evidence “of things not seen,” negative evidence of things I hadn’t seen: the mechanic I had entrusted my life to was sloppy at best or inept at worst. Needless to say, I never went back.
500 great flights and 5 not-so-great flights
I have flown on many flights during my life, both nationally and internationally. Many of them have been for vacations and mission trips. But the vast majority have been for New Commandment Men’s Ministries. A while back, I made a rough estimate of all the flights I had been on and it was well over 500.
Airplane flights are a great example of faith in “things not seen.” I didn’t know the people who designed the planes, made the planes, maintained the planes, flew the planes, or controlled the planes I flew on. Nevertheless, the moment I stepped from the jet bridge onto the plane those 500 plus times, I was exercising ordinary faith that the plane could lift my body up to 30,000 feet in the air, and carry me at 500 miles per hour for hundreds and thousands of miles, and land me safely at whatever airport I was going to. And as I flew and flew and flew, my ordinary faith became evidence-based faith. All the people who had done and were doing their jobs had done and were doing them extremely well. And because of that, all of my flights were uneventful.
Well, almost.
There were the two times my plane had to make emergency landings due to mechanical failure. There was also the time our pilot aborted his landing at the last second due to high winds. And there was also the time our plane began taxying across a runway, only to stop and back up, just in time to miss being t-boned by a plane that was taking off on the runway we were crossing.
But the flight that really shook my faith in airplanes was the “chicken flight.” I was flying back to the states from a poor country. When I boarded the plane, I noticed that only the front half of the cabin had seats. The back half was completely devoid of seats. After we all boarded, I soon leaned why. The airline crew loaded the back half of the plane with crates filled with chickens! But that wasn’t all. As we taxied down the runway, I noticed several planes parked nearby that had major parts missing: an engine here, a tail section there, wheels with no tires. Then I realized in horror that those parts that were missing were quite possibly transplanted onto the plane I was on!
So here is what my ordinary faith in airplanes has revealed about “things not seen” as they relate to air travel: I can trust airplanes and all the people that work in, on, and around them most of the time. But about 1% of the time there are going to be significant issues, even life-threatening issues. You might say I have evidence-based faith in planes, but with and an asterisk.
A 500 year flood and 500,000 dollars
“God is able to make all grace overflow to you, so that, always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good work” 2 Corinthians 9:8
Quincy, Illinois is the westernmost city in the state. It sits on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi river and its six mile wide floodplain. Most of the city itself is built on the bluff, but several hundred homes are also built on the floodplain, protected only by a miles long twenty foot high levy system.
In July of 1993, the Mississippi River experienced a 500 year flood. It’s called The Great Flood of ’93. At Quincy, the river crested at 32 feet above flood stage and breached the levy system. Normally, the Mississippi River at Quincy is about half a mile wide. But after the levies were breached and inundated farmlands and small towns, the river expanded to the entire six miles of the floodplain, closing both bridges leading in and out of Quincy, and flooding six hundred homes.
I was the pastor of a church in Quincy when the flood happened. Realizing that over a 1,000 people had been displaced from their homes, I and other pastors in town decided to do a fundraiser for the families. One of the pastors knew some Christian country western artists in Nashville, so we invited them to come and put on a concert. Unfortunately, they insisted on being paid. “We don’t do bars and honkey-tonks,” they said. “We have to make a living somehow.”
We agreed to pay the performers and held the concert. A large crowd show up, but after we paid all expenses, we raised a grand total of only $1,100. Needless to say, we were embarrassed. How could we help in any significant way all those households who had gone through this terrible tragedy with just $1,100?
But a couple of days later, our $1,100 fundraiser turned into a five-loaves-and-two-fish moment. A national Christian benevolence ministry contacted us and said they had heard about our pastor’s group and our fundraiser. They said news about the 500 year flood had motivated Christians around the country to send them over 500,000 dollars (over a million in today’s dollars) for the flood victims. But they needed “boots on the ground” to distribute it and they asked our group of pastors if we would be willing to do that.
Shocked and amazed at God’s provision, we said we would love to. With that money, we were able to replace stoves, refrigerators, and other kitchen appliances for everyone in the flood zone who asked us for help. And the story of what we were doing made the national evening TV news.
This story is just one example of how, for many many years now, I have witnessed God’s provision every time he has called me to do the good works he saved me to do. He has never, ever failed. As a result, I can now say that my ordinary faith in 2 Corinthians 9:8 has become evidence-based faith, with no asterisk. And over the years, I have challenged thousands and thousands of men, pastors, and churches to trust God to do whatever good works are necessary to meet every pressing need in their churches so that their church can say, “There are no need persons among us.” And I can testify that I have never had a pastor, or anyone else for that matter, call me and say, “Herb, what have you gotten us into?” It has never happened. Instead, they too now have their own stories of God’s provision for their good works.
If we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ as God’s provision for our eternal salvation, then can we not also place our faith in God’s further provision when he calls us to do the good works he saved us and called us to do?
Let us now put the pieces together when it comes to ordinary faith producing evidence-based faith as it applies to Hebrews 11. All of us are finite, contingent human beings who comprehend only a small fraction of all possible knowledge. Given this limitation, the way we navigate our world is by exercising ordinary faith again and again every day. That practice leads to evidence-based faith that helps us relax and not curl up in a fetal position and stay in bed all day long.
When it comes to our relationship with God, he is simply asking us to navigate it by exercising ordinary faith the same way we do in our everyday lives: by trusting, over and over, in God’s existence, in his character, in his promises, and in his power and commitment to keep his promises. As we exercise ordinary faith this way and see God repeatedly do exactly what he promised, it expands into evidence-based faith, resulting in calmness and assurance when things do not seem to go our way. We see this appeal to evidence-based faith in the rest of Hebrews 11, as the writer gives us example after example of those “witnesses” who have gone before us and accomplished amazing good works on the basis of faith in God’s promise. The writer is challenging us to build up our own reservoir of evidence of God’s fulfilled promise that he will provide everything we need to do the good work he has called us and saved us to do.
So, my fellow believers, you can step into a glorified aluminum can with jet engines on it and trust it to lift you up to 30,000 feet and fly you at 500 miles an hour to just about anywhere in the world, even though you have never met the people who made it, maintain it, guide it, or fly it. Can’t you also trust God to provide the resources you need to do every good work he has saved you and called you to do?
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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