How can I believe that religion is better than doubt?

Why, according to Jesus, is religion better than evidence? That's a question I've had a hard time answering since I started my faith as a young man. Sometimes I found it heavier, sometimes easier. It could intensify during times of grief and pain, when religion offers little comfort or even make a world that seems casual and cruel.

This question is asked in periods like this, when religion is more confusing than clears the reality, when it is easy to manipulate for low purposes, and when some who claim to be people of religion act in a way that brings dishonesty to them and to themselves.

Why dance in religion when considering these? Persisting on any evidence as small as empirical before we take action in question.

The apostle Toma thought the same way. According to disciple John, the other disciples had told Tom that they had seen the living God, after which Toma had answered, saying he would not believe until he put his fingers in the nails that had stuck Jesus and that until he put his hand in Jesus.

After a while, when Toma met Jesus who told him, <x0... Don't doubt it, but believe it.” Toma does this, and Jesus answers, “Because you saw me, you believed; blessed be those who didn't see me, yet believed. ”

In believing without seeing Jesus was held up as a greater thing than in believing seeing. But I'm not sure I've completely grasped what is in religion that makes it precious in God's eyes. Finally, with the help of fellow pastors, theologians, authors of the believer I have tried to deepen my understanding of the matter.

It is noteworthy that treating Christian religion as different from evidence does not mean that it is antithetic to evidence and reason. Christianity is a religion that claims to have roots in history, and it is not an abstract philosophy. St. Polly wrote that if Jesus had not been resurrected, the Christian religion would have been futile and his followers would have been <x0... sorry. ”

Christians would say, in fact, that the reason is aconfirmed in the Holy Scriptures é “come, and dialogue together,” is what Isaiah CHA asserts and that faith properly understood is consistent and deepens our understanding of reality. “The reason why you reassign trust,” my colleague George Weigel told me. “Trust for no reason risks leading to superstition; the faithless reason builds a world without windows, doors, and no sky. ”

But belief in itself, if not contrary to reason, is different. If it seems that you're asking a lot if you think religion is more for children than for adults consider this: materialistic, rationalists, and atheists eventually put their faith into beliefs. To tell the truth, even operating through reason is an attitude of faith. Denying God's existence is the same operation through belief as professing that existence. As pastor Tim Keller told me, “Most of the things we believe in, for example, human rights and equality among people are not empirically prosperous. ”

The supreme end of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason,” Blise Pascal said. If something didn't require trust then the evidence for it would be absolute. According to Philip Yance, the author of the “Jesus I never knew,”: “Fey requires the possibility of disbelief, or it's not religion.”

Perhaps the key to understanding why religion is sick within the Christian tradition is to include faith that would not be needed if God's existence were subject to mathematical evidence. What God requires of us is not an intellectual rock as much as a relationship with us. This is, after all, one of God's purposes in Jesus.

Every meaningful relationship between parents and children, co-husbands, friends-shok-shik includes a certain degree of trust. It is better and more refreshing to become the object of someone's faith than to be the last person behind a range of logical degradation. This is true of us as individuals, and it can be true of God as well.

Religion demonstrates human faith in him and, according to James Forsyth, pastor in Virginia, demonstrates that we accept God's love for us. “has a force within love that is liquid to be accepted,” he said.

Craig Barnes, president of the Princeton Theological Theatre, told me that, “Fey is a blessing greater than evidence because it gives us a relationship with Jesus. All good relationships are bound by love. And love is always an expression of faith.” He also said that evidence should not necessarily inspire trust. At the end of his Gospel account, Matthew shows that some people still doubted the resurrected Christ. [When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some of them doubted him. ”]

Some of those who witnessed the miracles of Jesus wanted to kill him. Judas, one of Jesus ' disciples, betrayed him with a kiss. Thus, physical experience is not enough for faith and alliance.

Our most important forms of knowledge rarely result from logic or evidence, according to Cherie Harder, president of the Trinity Forum. Quoting a work by theologian Lesley Newbigin, she says that faith comes from a certain personal knowledge. I know her heart, I know her character, and that's why I trust her.

“Trust,” told me Mrs. Harder, “is connected to love in a way that logical degradation and reason is not. We differ from what we want more than what we think. ”

Faith can enable us to understand things in a different way than the reason that offers a uniform way of understanding. So did J.R.R. Tolkien said that pagan myths were not lies but rather some profound truths. Imagination can be integrated into reason, he believed, in a way that helps us see reality a little clearer. The reason is a way to perceive reality; trust rooted not in any partisan ideology but in goodness and in the sense of sacredness is another.

There is another difference between religion and reason. The latter can analyze things like quantum physics and modern cosmology. But what religion can do is to put our lives in a narrative way that the reason cannot. Give us a role in a fiery drama in which the Christmas season is a crucial scene. It is a drama involving sin and betrayal, salvation and goodness; and eventually it gives our lives a purpose despite the fractures and pains we experience. This may mean nothing to you, but to people of religion it is all there is. If God exists, maybe you should.

It is known that when Toma makes his request to Jesus, he is not punished. Moreover, Jesus gives Thomas what he loves in this case, and he makes it clear that Jesus is willing to meet us wherever we are. Some were given evidence - at least as a start; for others, their religion is insufficient.

According to Christian tradition, Toma would go to serve as a missionary in India when she was martyred. I imagine that his faith had nothing to do with putting his hand on Jesus rather than with what was in his heart. His intellectual doubts contained faith. In my experience, at least that trip was never easy. For many of us, the shadows of doubt exist with religion.

Accepting religion does not mean rejecting suspicion. In fact, it is precisely to take the suspicion seriously, but to understand the most fully suspicious ʹ not only as a reasonable mind but as a complete person, with divine flashes allowing us to see, now and once, through the walls that we have built between faith and reason.

(Ray Comfort) Periscope