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Podcast
Faith Crisis
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Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dave DeWitt, and today I'd like to talk to you about something that's going on
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a lot in Christianity today, and it's not preached about much, people abandoning their
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faith in Christ.
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As a definition, a crisis of faith is when someone stops believing in something crucial
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in their life.
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A crisis is an unstable or critical or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive
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change is impending, that's according to Merriam-Webster.
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The American Oxford Dictionary says, it's time when a difficult or important decision
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must be made.
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Just a few more definitions.
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Faith is a decision to trust what we understand to be true.
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Good faith is a rational decision to trust the objective evidence, and faith in the
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Bible, as faith as it's used in the Bible, is a decision to trust the truth itself.
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So a crisis of faith is what happens when a new understanding forces someone to no longer
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believe what they formerly believed.
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So the question for us is, what about the case where some Christian stops trusting what
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they formerly believed about Jesus or God or the Bible?
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In Christianity, there are two common examples.
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Number one, a child goes off to college or becomes involved with progressives in some
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way, say in a job, with the result that he or she no longer believes in the Christian
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message they grew up with.
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Number two, after a tragic incident, say the suffering of the death of a loved one
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or a person experiences severe loss or pain that they expected a loving God to prevent,
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so they no longer believe in a loving God.
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For the world in which we live, a crisis of faith is not necessarily a bad thing.
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Usually a crisis of faith is experienced by everyone rejecting previously well-thought-out
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belief.
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For example, if you're a Muslim and become a Christian, you've had a crisis of faith
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in Islam.
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And notice that there's no conversion without a crisis of faith.
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You can't blend Christianity and Islam and accept both.
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But more common are those who believed in themselves, and they could achieve happiness
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through pursuing earthly pleasure or success.
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Then that ends in disappointment, and they understand it'll all end at the grave, and
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only Jesus Christ conquers death.
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And so their understanding changed, and they received Christ as their personal Savior.
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They had a crisis of faith in themselves where a new understanding forced them to no longer
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believe in themselves as a source of happiness.
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Any repentance is going to assume a crisis of faith.
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But a crisis does not require a new belief.
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One can come to an understanding that something formerly believed is not true without coming
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to a brand new alternative belief.
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A person can understand the religion they grew up with is wrong, thus having a crisis
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of faith without accepting a new religion.
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A person can remain agnostic about a new religion while experiencing a crisis of faith in their
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old religion.
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According to Merriam-Webster, a crisis is not necessarily a bad thing or a new belief.
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It's only a time, quote, in which a decisive change is impending, close quote.
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Remember, faith is a decision to trust what we understand to be true.
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It's an inevitable decision.
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We cannot help but believe what we understand to be true.
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Understanding inevitably creates faith.
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So a crisis of faith is simply a change of understanding where we have to give up something
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which we used to think was true.
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If that change is away from understanding the truth and the way things actually are,
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then it's a bad crisis of faith.
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If that change is away from understanding an idea not connected to reality, then it's
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a good crisis.
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How does a person overcome a crisis in Christian faith?
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Most answers to this question are naive and insufficient.
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Here's an advice given by one organization.
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I'm not going to quote them because they're a good organization, but it's a bad idea.
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So I'm going to just read the quote.
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Quote, in overcoming a crisis of faith, we must lay our hearts before the Lord, pour
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out our souls, and surrender afresh to his will for our lives.
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Then by faith, we ask for the fruit that can be ours again, close quote.
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Yeah, but isn't the problem that they've lost the faith to do that?
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How does a person lay their heart before the Lord and by faith ask for help when the problem
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is they don't have the faith to lay their heart before the Lord and ask for help?
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It seems to assume faith is a blind leap, devoid of reason and detached from an understanding
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of reality.
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It seems to be something we can simply choose to have, and that's impossible.
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Try choosing to believe in leprechauns, tooth fairies, or unicorns.
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It seems we need more realistic approach.
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Remember, faith is always connected to understanding.
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So a crisis of faith is a change in understanding, which can only be fixed by a renewed understanding.
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I'm not suggesting that there's some automatic, easy, pragmatic way to solve crisis of faith.
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But in most common cases involving a crisis of Christian faith, there are two, the two
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we mentioned above, there are many more.
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Some basic questions we can ask.
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Question number one, what exactly did you believe in that you no longer believe in?
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Usually faith that is abandoned was in something that was never true in the first place.
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They may have believed in a false teaching.
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They were given by a preacher, a hypocritical church, one with just plain silly ideas, a
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health, wealth, prosperity evangelist, or a sympathetic uninformed believer trying to
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give comfort.
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If they believed in a Pollyanna God who disallows suffering, then their faith is a crisis waiting
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to happen.
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Question two, is your crisis of faith a move away from truth or away from myth?
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For example, let's say a person is moving away from biblical Christianity to evolution
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or it's social child progressivism.
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That means they're moving away from a rational evaluation of real life observations of the
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way things are, like the evidence of the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and the
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credibility of the biblical records.
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And they're moving to a belief with no observations at all in the real world, no observations
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in biology and geological formations, fossil records, or anywhere else.
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It's a move from truth to myth, and that's never a good idea.
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Question number three, is your crisis of faith about the God described in the Bible or is
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it about you?
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For example, most, not all, atheists are just God haters.
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Most of their arguments go something like this.
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Premise one, a good God would not allow suffering.
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Premise two, there's significant suffering in the world.
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Conclusion, there's no good God.
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I want to say, really?
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You know what a good God would do?
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You're smarter.
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You know more about what's good than an omniscient God.
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The basic question here is, do you like God?
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God is who he is.
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He's done what he's done.
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He's doing what he's doing, and he's going to do what he's going to do.
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And he's doing it according to his own character.
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If you don't like that, then it's about you, not God.
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We suffer because God judges the sins of Adam and Eve with consequences.
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He did the same with the evil people at the flood, with Sodom and Gomorrah, with the disobedient
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Israelites, with the nations that hated Israel.
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He'll do the same in the future with every person, according to Ecclesiastes 12, 14.
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He also sent his son to die in our place.
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If we want forgiveness, he'll take Jesus' payment as a substitute for our sin.
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We just have to decide to receive him.
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Now, if you don't like that, then your problem is not the crisis of faith.
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You just don't like God.
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Question four, which have you studied more lately, God's word or some idea that is contrary
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to God's word?
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Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
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Our faith is always a decision to trust what we understand to be true.
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Recovering our faith is a product of recovering that understanding, and recovering a Christian
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understanding comes by the word of God.
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If you don't have faith, then you can't simply choose to have faith.
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But you can decide to read and study his written word.
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For example, if you've been to the university, how many hours have you listened to teaching
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on and been asked to read progressive ideas based on evolution?
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Have you put that many hours into studying the Bible?
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Have you read what the patriarchs like Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, the prophets, Jesus,
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and the apostles did when they faced life difficulties?
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Have you read books written by great men and women of the Christian faith?
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Remember, a crisis of faith is always a crisis of understanding, which is always impacted
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by what you're studying.
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As a summary and a conclusion, a crisis of faith should be dealt with, number one, by
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asking what exactly am I rejecting?
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Two, looking for real evidence.
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Three, asking if it's about loving yourself more than God.
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And four, studying the truth, not just myths.
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You can't reasonably say you've rejected biblical Christianity if you've spent more time reading
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about evolution and listening to progressive professors than you have reading the Bible
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and listening to teachers who take it as literally true.
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Well thank you for listening.
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If you're interested in a longer paper on this subject with more footnotes and references,
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it's on our website relationalconcepts.org.
