WE LIVE , as all Christians before us, in times that try our faith. This has been true in every generation. But we live now, not only with the trials our predecessors faced, but in an incredible age of technology. God prophesied through the prophet Daniel about our times, explaining a vision the prophet had experienced. He said, “I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time to come.” (Dan. 10:13) God describes the spiritual and earthly warfare that will encompass future history, but assures Daniel that “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Dan. 12:2) “Those who are wise” in each following generation, God tells Daniel, “will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.” (Dan. 12:3) His instruction ends with what seems a cryptic prophetic word, and indeed this has been true—until our time. He says, “Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.” (Dan. 12:4b)
There has been no time on earth like our time in this context. The eight billion people of earth have access to global travel unimagined until a short century ago. The information available to everyone through the internet has exponentially increased knowledge by orders of magnitude thought impossible just a quarter-century ago. And with this the voices of the cultures of the earth have become a blaring megaphone that covers over and also permeates the voice of faith in the God of the bible.
The challenges to our faith come from the voices of politicians, and from the voices leading our schools, from grammar school to the most prestigious academies. They come from our entertainment channels and media, and from the press. Their voices unite in a cacophony of sound that seemingly obliterates the voice of God. Jesus, the most influential voice in history, has been silenced in the public square by these same voices. The very cultural movement that once insisted on free speech now promotes only unispeak. The message of unispeak is “believe in the science,” and clearly relegates faith in the God of the bible as superstition. It also defines acceptable rhetoric and that which is unacceptable, and clearly, the voice of faith in Jesus Christ is being marginalized, suppressed, and is moving quickly towards being declared anathema.
The Apostle Paul saw this issue very clearly, and begins and ends his first letter to Timothy with cautions and careful instruction about the supreme importance of faith in God. He opens by saying, “Timothy, my son, fight the battle well, holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith.” (1 Tim. 1:18-19) The imagery is appropriate; Ephesus, where Timothy pastored a church, was a sea-faring town on the trade routes connecting Asia Minor, the curve of the Levant, and across northern Africa, all bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Merchant ships as well as military ships were not infrequently driven by storm surge into the rocky shores, with much cargo and many lives lost.
But Paul is using this imagery as a simile. Much as a sailing vessel must pay attention to taut ropes and sail angles and furling to guide the vessel to safe harbor, Christians must be aware of the forces that oppose them, and firmly grasp in our soul, as with a clenched fist, the faith entrusted to us, never losing our grip lest our faith be found wanting in time of trial and we suffer damage or destruction. And since such trials come in times of temptation, Paul includes that ‘ a good conscience,’ like the small rudder that steers a large ship, is essential—that our moral sensitivity, grounded in the word of God with its capacity to guide our decisions and actions, is key to the exercise of our faith.
As Paul closes, he adds “Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have departed from the faith.” (1 Tim. 6:20-21) And this remains our challenge also—all the ‘false chatter,’ the din of cultural voices all competing, one to be loudest than all others, is toxic to those who are weak in faith. Modern champions of the faith, as were our predecessors, are not concerned that science trumps faith, for it is God who created the universe and all that is in it. We are called to weigh such matters in the light of biblical truth, and in so doing we will find truth and be encouraged by it. And in those times when clarity is murky, we simply hold onto faith, not as unreasoning, but as reckoned—counted as true even when we do not understand.
Truth is always a casualty in the conflict between myriad opposing worldviews, for each of them holds highest only its own cherished truths. As Christians, we believe that truth is not subjective, and is not a product of our own mental fabrication. Our worldview here and now is informed by a realm outside of and far above our existence, one that transcends the boundaries that hold all other worldviews captive to the realm below. Our worldview starts with, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1) It is completed with, “For God so loved the world.” (cf. John 3:16-17) It stands the test of hard science, and rejects all scientific speculation. Our faith is not a *“circular self-reflective leap of faith,” grounded in nothing but wishful thinking, but a faith that is informed by both general and special revelation.
Lest we forget, however, it is special revelation that is of first order. As Jesus told Peter after his statement of faith, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.” (Matt. 16:17) Our faith in God and his promises to us in, by, and through Jesus, is our most precious and cherished possession. Guard it carefully.
Q. Am I objectively secure in my faith?
* Søren Kierkegaard, “Concluding Unscientific Postscript”– 1846.