Taco Tuesday was a special night last night for me and Patti. We celebrated her last day at work and entrance into retirement after forty years working as a nurse practitioner with a hot date to Rubio’s in our local mall.
Living with someone working in the medical field for four decades exposed me to a lot of medical terminology. One term that popped up every now and then was “evidenced-based medicine.” Since even medical professionals can get sucked into accepting medical practices that have not been sufficiently scientifically validated (think opioids and hormone replacement therapy), Patti and her fellow health care providers developed the habit of meeting together and reviewing the latest medical literature to make sure what they were doing and prescribing was supported by genuine scientific evidence.
I’ve been thinking about that term lately and wondering if there is such a thing as “evidence-based faith.” I think the majority of people today would say no. Don’t evidence and reason and proof make faith unnecessary? Aren’t we supposed to believe in spite of the evidence? Even Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.”1 Isn’t faith “the assurance of what we do not see”?2
On the other hand, the Bible is full of appeals to evidence, reason and proof.
For example, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul appeals to evidence in defending Christianity:
“He [Christ] appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.“3
And in Acts 17, we read an account of Paul using reason:
“Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead.”4
And finally, in Acts 2, Peter uses proof:
“Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on the throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it.”5
So, while all of us believers today fit into the category of “those who have not seen, and yet have believed,” Jesus did not call us to blind, irrational faith. There are very good and sufficient reasons to believe what we believe.
But is it possible, as religious people, to get sucked into believing something false? Of course it is. That’s why I want to commend something to you: as an act of worship – and pure enjoyment – review the evidence for your faith. Be sure to set aside a good amount of time, because there’s a lot of evidence to consider. And with the modern advances in archaeology, there’s more and more almost every day. Review and memorize the critical biblical passages that form the foundation for our faith. Read a good book on apologetics. Discuss it with your friends and digest its main points. Because our faith is not based on thin air, but on the solid rock of objective truth.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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