Simple Trusting Faith

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. It is not necessary that the whole universe should arm itself to crush him--a vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But though the universe should crush him, man would still be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he dies, and the advantage which the universe has over him--Blaise Pascal.

     A few years ago I wrote a book which I called Simple Trusting Faith, and which is now out of print. It grew out of what I felt was a necessity. As I went about holding "rap sessions" with college and university students, a lot of young people asked me where they could secure a book which would provide a fairly adequate expression of my views. Since I did not know of such a volume I sat down and wrote one of my own.

     I dealt with the concept of the existence of God, as well as with the incarnation of the Word and the virgin birth. I also considered the problem of the supernatural as evidenced in miracles and concluded with a chapter upon eternal life as a new dimension of existence available now through a relationship to God by the Holy Spirit.

     I wrote the book easily and the arguments appearing in it seemed to me to be valid. The terminology I employed was not forced. I did not adopt a vocabulary for the occasion. I am not a scientist and the professional scientific vernacular would have been as far out for me as it would have been for most of my readers.

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     It came, therefore, as a real surprise to me when I began to receive letters from all over saying that the book was helpful but was very far from being simple. Some folk wrote that if this was an expression of simple trusting faith they would be hard put to read a book on profound trusting faith. Of course, many of those who wrote were like myself, quite lacking in formal educational attainments. Real scholars no doubt thought of the book as quite superficial, and if they read it all, they did so as light literature before retiring at night.

     But I learned something from my experience. A lot of folk who accept the Bible sincerely, as containing a revelation of the divine mind, could not build a logical case for it at all. Actually, such a structural foundation, piling up syllogisms like building blocks, would leave them cold. They would be dangling on the literary ropes before they had read six pages.

     This has caused the faith to become a butt of ridicule by some who are sophisticated, and by a great many others who think they are. It is assumed that a majority of Christians are gullible, basing their hope on traditional views and childhood fantasies left over from Sunday school. This has sparked a reaction upon our part and driven us to think that we must validate the faith by carefully constructed argument which can be typed out in a format so convincing that it will knock unsuspecting skeptics and atheists for the proverbial loop when it is read in their presence.

     I am all for a rational approach. I do not mean by that a view which is wholly outside the realm of experience and emotion. I have read books presenting the case for Christianity which were as cold as a frog on a dissecting table. I have also listened to learned lecturers who could deal with apologetics as masterfully, and about as concernedly, as an Irish bricklayer. If God is not real to me in my daily life, and if the Spirit is not my Comforter all of the time, what I produce in my study will probably be as dry as sawdust and about as palatable. There are not many of us who live in an intellectual penthouse. We have to get faith down on the street level. We cannot soar around over town like a glorified Batman. Jesus did not say "Feed my giraffes." He said, "Feed my sheep!" We have to get the fodder down out of the trees and in the trough.

     Shall one wait for faith until he has examined, scrutinized, and evaluated the formal evidence and digested it? If so, a lot of folk will never be able to attain to faith. I doubt that very many are led to the faith once delivered by erudite argument. I once knew a very perceptive lawyer who thought he was safe by claiming to be an agnostic. I liked him and he liked me and because we could make mental sparks fly we were frequently together. He deliberately posed questions to probe the ability of faith to defend itself as in a court of law. This suited me! Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living," and I have paraphrased that to read, "The unexamined faith is not worth having." It seems to me that faith must make itself vulnerable in the marketplace, or it may be merely prejudice.

     After we had mentally sparred vigorously for more than a year, my friend asked me to baptize him one day. I did so, inwardly rejoicing (God forgive me!) that I had vanquished his precise arguments and won the battle of wits. He soon disabused my thinking when he said there were many points about the rational structure which were not yet clear and he even thought I was a little muddled in some of my arguments. The thing which had finally won him was patience coupled with genuine love. He had come to feel that Jesus was who He claimed to be because of the quality of His presence in the inner life of those who had accepted him.

     The strange thing about this is that what I regarded as my strongest arguments did not get through to him, or, if they did, they did not appeal to his rational powers. But my life, which I

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regarded as my weakest proof, impressed him. It came to me that we will probably never be able to work out a systematic sequence of syllogistic proof which will overthrow skepticism. It is altogether possible that God never intended for us to try.

     Cardinal Newman once wrote, "The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma; no man will be a martyr for a conclusion."

     I think there is beauty and utility in apologetic structures erected by word architects of rational premises. I stand amazed at the knowledge displayed by those who have covered the field of defense. But many admire great buildings who could not describe them, much less explain their construction. We look at cathedrals but we live in homes, and many of the faithful must remain in the suburban area of rationalization. They are so busy eking out an existence, and life is so short and the hours so crowded they cannot make an adequate study of evidences.

     The ever-recurring seasons, the orderliness of the universe, the glory of the planetary system and the regimentation of the mysterious hosts of heaven--all of these speak to the soul in a quiet whisper which stifles doubt and stimulates faith. It is not so much an arrangement of a proper line of thought as it is the agreement of the whole. Reports of archaeological finds reported in the newspaper, discoveries such as those of the scrolls at Qumran, all of these bolster the inner sense of conviction in hearts which know nothing about the laws of evidence or of the scientific method.

     Perhaps the faith has a built-in logic of its own. This in no sense declares that formal proofs are irrelevant and unimportant. Nothing that is true is without importance in a universe where all truth is harmonious and there is no discord with the Creator. But minds must believe which are without knowledge of logic and its classification of fallacies. If the voice of nature speaks to the remote forest dweller and confirms in his inner being what the missionary has told him in simple language, then let us praise God that this becomes his primary apologetic.

     The incidental evidences which might even look foolish if set down in a book of formal logic, are eloquent to the unadorned hearts which find in them a confirmation of the deep yearning which strives for expression in life and deed. Faith has its difficulties, whether grounded in logic or in the universal voice of conscience, but the incredibilities of unbelief are so vast that their very existence constitutes an argument for the Christian faith. How thrilled I am that God has adapted the faith to all, whether it be a pin-headed pygmy in the jungle or a Princeton professor in the asphalt jungle and the intellectual tangle.