MY TESTIMONY: Let’s Get to the Truth About What Faith Is

Unless you’ve been asleep for the past several decades, you have heard it said many times, in many ways and in many places that faith, especially Christian faith, is based on blind acceptance, as opposed to secular, materialistic science, which is based on evidence and logic.

Like so much else in the conventional wisdom of our culture, the “faith is blind” maxim is an imminently reasonable sounding misrepresentation of reality. Thus, one of the first dictionary definitions of faith is this: “Belief that is not based on proof.”

In fact, accurately analyzed, faith equals conviction that is a cultivated product of experience, evidence and logic. In other words, faith properly understood, is the opposite of blind acceptance or mere belief.

To demonstrate this, allow me to explain. I have faith that Jesus Christ is exactly what He claims in the Gospel of John to be; that is, “the Way, the Truth and the Life,” and “no man comes to the Father but through Me.” By “the Father,” Jesus means to be with God Himself in Heaven forever, which for human beings is a result of being “saved.”

How can I “know” this to be true? First, by my own life experience. Before March 1, 1991, I was, by worldly standards, a talented, ambitious and successful journalist with a great future ahead in a profession that I love.

The reality was anything but, as I realized that morning when I awakened from what has since proven to be my last drunk. I couldn’t stay sober for more than a day or two, my personal life was a continuous wreck and, despite constantly telling myself otherwise, I was desperately unhappy.

Having grown up in Oklahoma and heard the Gospel many times in church, I knew that my profession of faith and baptism in the eighth grade was a hollow mockery, that in the years since, I had become a hypocrite of the worst kind. All of those facts became crystal clear to me in an instant of recognition. I cried out that morning in desperation, “Lord, please help me!”

And, in a voice as clear as those I hear on the television in the background now as I compose this post, He answered me, saying “I was always there.” It took years before I began to understand why He said that and what He meant by it.

Today, I know that He was telling me He was why I wasn’t murdered in one of the the several drunken muggings I experienced over the years following drinking sprees late at night on the ugly streets of Washington, D.C.

Or killed in a crash during the three years that I spent racing a Formula Ford and a Mustang GT at Summit Point, Watkins Glen and other racetracks around the country. Or felled by cirrhosis of the liver, or dropped in any of the countless other unplanned, unexpected, inexplicable ways people suddenly depart this world, without warning, every day.

It Was A Time To Choose:

I realized that morning in 1991 that I had to make a choice – keep living the self-centered lies that I had told myself all those years, or face the truth, get sober and end the hypocrisy. In short, it was time, as the Gospel describes it, to “repent,” to turn and go in the opposite direction by recognizing Jesus as my personal savior.

In the decades since, I’ve experienced countless blessings, including a wonderful marriage of 27 years, witnessing the extraordinary life of my son and his cherished family, being blessed with grandchildren that I adore, having five Labs and one little Yorkie that have provided so much delight through the years, and accomplishing more than I ever dreamed possible in the newsroom. He has, in short, demonstrated to me over and over the truth of His promise to provide everything I need and so much more.

That is not to say there haven’t been heartaches and losses along the way. There have been, including challenging lessons learned in the journey of marriage, the sudden end of an editorship that I treasured, the loss of a precious relationship with a daughter due to the painful consequences of divorce. And more. What is different now is how I respond: Before, it was to reach for another drink. Today, it is to reach for Him in prayer and in His Word.

That is my experience of and with Jesus. Now, let’s look at the second factor, the evidence that Jesus is exactly what He claims to be. The central claim of Christianity is that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ, who came to this earth, lived a perfect life, was crucified dead and buried, then three days later, was resurrected and seen by more than 500 witnesses before ascending back into Heaven where He rules today. (He also promised to return, by the way!)

What If Jesus Wasn’t Resurrected?

If the Resurrection is not a fact, then Christianity is all a lie. As Paul put it, if Christ was not raised from the dead, then my faith is worthless. So the key question is how do I account for the resurrection?

The evidence is abundant, but let me focus on one simple fact: Jesus’ tomb was guarded by an elite unit of the Roman legion, so it is inconceivable to think either the disciples or anybody else could have overcome those soldiers and stolen Jesus’ dead body.

What about Jesus’ enemies, the Romans who executed Him and the Jewish authorities who demanded His crucifixion? If they had somehow secured Jesus’ dead body in another location — knowing as they did that He had predicted His resurrection — as soon as the disciples began proclaiming He was alive, His enemies would have rolled His dead body down Main Street in Jerusalem. Christianity would have ended right there.

So, we come to the third factor, logic. Let’s deal with it via two questions: Is it logical to conclude God exists and is it then logical to conclude that Jesus is God, as He repeatedly claimed to be?

You’ve heard of the Big Bang. That tells us the universe had a beginning. All things with a beginning have a cause. The universe had a beginning, therefore the universe must have a cause. That cause must be beyond the material universe of time, space and matter, it must be supernatural, or God. Philosophers call this the Cosmological Proof for the existence of God.

Big Bang = Big God?

But that doesn’t get us to Jesus as God. If, as we see above, that it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus was resurrected, then the claims of the disciples that they witnessed the Resurrected Jesus must also be taken seriously. The disciples took their claims so seriously that all but one of them died for their insistence that Jesus was alive. No man dies for what he knows to be a lie.

Now, does it make sense when I say faith is not mere blind acceptance or groundless belief? I know Jesus is what He claimed to be because I have experienced Him, I have evaluated the evidence, and I grasp the logic. My conclusion is a matter of conviction.

If you would like more information on these matters, drop me a confidential email at mark.tapscott@hillfaith.org. If you would like to get together for a totally off-the-record, face-to-face conversation, to pursue your questions, discuss your doubts, or simply to exchange views in a friendly, non-judgmental conversation, say so in your email and we’ll make it happen.

And if you are up for some additional research, let me know that, too, along with your snail mail address, and I will send you a free copy of “More Than A Carpenter,” the classic, concise summary description of the case for the Resurrection, by Josh McDowell and his son, Professor Sean McDowell of Biola University.

In the meantime, blessings to you.

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