God's Presence

If I asked you if you were 'certain' about something how would you respond?  Likely, you would begin to gather facts or arguments that would support your claim.  In the end you would either prove your point and would have presented enough evidence that leaves no doubt (certainty), or there would be a sense of uncertainty remaining (doubt).

This creates a real problem for us Christians who believe that the claims of things like who God is, what He is about, His involvement in human history, and where the world is headed in relation to Him, are absolutely true!  But we have a hard time probing them with certainty and if that is the criteria that we all accept as the means by which we label the things that have the most weighty truth about them, then we feel like we fall short.  If we can't say with certainty these things are true then we are left to wrestle with the opposite and that is elements of doubt. 

So with these categories in mind we think of faith as a lesser form of certainty--we can't really prove it like we can a mathematical formula that leaves no doubt--but we are still absolutely sure that claims of the Bible are just as true. 

I want to suggest that the categories we deal with currently are not necessary.

I will not go into historical detail of how things got the way there are, and will simply present an alternative.  Much like Monty Python, I will say and now for something completely different. . . .

You might not realize it, but Enlightenment Rationality has created our current situation--and Reason is what has set the current rules in place through which we describe things we think are true.  But to say that something is absolutely true does not have to be true with rational certainty.  It is only one way (a highly successful way!) to approach truth, and I want to present you with another way. . .

To the ancient Hebrews, truth (emeth) was understood as faithfulness.  It was a very relational term and encompassed things that included reason but was not determined exclusively by it.  To be 'true' had elements that are encapsulated in troth--as in when two people agree to be 'true' to each other over their lifetimes.  Truth and troth both come from the same etymological roots and share with each other meaning that is very helpful to us today. 

For a Hebrew writer of scripture to hear Jesus saying that He is the way, the truth and the life, meant that He was making a claim of faithfulness.  That He would be true to what He says; that He would live according to the principles He speaks.  Truth, to Jesus, was so much more than a rational and provable claim--it was something that was proven again and again and again.

Now if you are like me, this all sounds fine, but at the end of the day to say something is not certain just doesn't carry the same weight as something that is faithful.  This just proves to me that we are so deeply imbedded in our current worldview that to imagine a different way of understanding truth just seems wrong.  But it isn't, it is just a different way of understanding.  A way that has a much longer history in the West than our current one, by the way!

So we hear this verse in Hebrews 11:1:  "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (NIV).  Whenever we hear 'certain' and 'faith' used in the same context our default is to try and explain faith through the lenses of what we understand certainty to be.  We will begin to formulate arguments and examples to 'prove' faith.  We will try our best to create a water-tight case that will leave no intellectual doubt as to the veracity of what faith really is.  We will do everything that our reason will allow in order to make faith as strong as possible--because after all, certainty is the strongest position to be in.  Anything else leaves doubt.

But what if we inverted this and began to evaluate certainty through the lens of faithfulness that is the foundation of truth?  What if certainty and reason, used in isolation of all other faculties, proved to come up short of what truth really is?  What if certainty and reason don't measure up to the strength of truth as faithfulness?

The word used in Hebrews 11:1 for 'certainty' is elenchus, which means 'spiritual evidence', or in this specific context, it is God's presence and activity that is the evidence that gives the certainty and the hope.  We can not see but we are sure and are filled with hope because we have been given the kind of certainty that is based on the spiritual evidence of God's presence and activity (elenchos).

There is an interesting thing at work here:  when we try to prove things certain with reason alone, we find ourselves in a position of authority and power.  If we discover something is certain, we come to end of the journey of that question.  We stand over and above it based on certainty.  Our sinful state loves this (hence why the world, including Christians have bought hook, line and sinker into the power of rationality as the final arbiter of all truth---it makes us feel like we are in control!). 

But if we understand truth from a Hebrew perspective, then we accept that something is true when I am in relation to it; I find myself being presented something that says it is true, but it remains open-ended (not doubtful or less certain but an ongoing discovery) because the essence of this kind of truth requires faithfulness and also time.  It requires that I live in active involvement with this truth in order for me to discover its faithfulness again and again.  As soon as I begin to see it with the lens of reason only (our current way of engaging truth), then it gives me permission to find out what is true, realize that the journey is now over, and I can turn my attention to other things because I already have the truth I am looking for.  Purely rational truth tends to isolate me from everything around me--I become a truth consumer, attaining one truth and because I do not need to stay connected in the journey of truth-knowing with that thing, I am free to pursue the next truth acquisition.  Truth that is pursued and known through reason only is a truth that requires of me no trust, relationship or humility.

And so the kind of truth that we sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father have been living with for our whole lives is one that always puts pressure on us to depend on ourselves for it's discovery.  Rational truth that pursues certainty entices us to live separately from each other and from God, but truth as faithfulness (emeth) is one that will always draw us closer in relationship to each other and to God because to know truth at all is to be in relationship period!

Some may think this all sounds very relativistic as there doesn't seem to be anything that is absolute to guide this kind of truth-as-faithfulness.  Well, I believe that the absolute we are presented with is Jesus himself.  He is the Truth.  He is the only guide into it.  He is the source and means of entering into it in every form and in every facet of human life.  He is the truth to be found in the hard sciences where the accurate discoveries and descriptions of the universe's elements are made in the light of the One who made them in the first place.  He is the truth that created the possibility of government, and the policies that guide us today. And on and on. 

We might think that what I am suggesting is ridiculous based on the fact that human reason, apart from any faith in God or Jesus at all, has led to all the kinds of discoveries that we enjoy in science today.  But what if it is by God's grace alone, that He has been patient to humanity as we continued on our idolatrous search for truth using our reason alone--apart from His way of understanding truth through faithfulness--that trusting and engaging journey of truth discovery done humbly holding His hand?

If truth is known only rationally, then we will always have to fight hard to try and understand how He makes sense in the areas of our lives that we see are not having to do with how we feel, our faith and our relationships (everything we ascribe to the subjective side of life).  Jesus is the truth of the subjective and the objective in all things because real truth is known in faithful relationship with the One who is Truth.

You may think this a tiring intellectual exercise, and you are entitled to your opinion.  But for me, this changes everything about who I am and how I live!  It makes me feel liberated from my culture that says human rationality is the only means by which I will know truth and that if I make the unreasonable decision to try and live by faith then I must live with perpetual doubt because nothing in faith is provable.

Jesus tells me He is the Truth--and I believe Him.  I see truth functioning as a form of faithfulness and that this is God's design and His desire for me.  He wants me to understand that I can discover truths that incorporate logic and rationality, but that also make room for beauty and wisdom and relationships to form what truth really looks and feels like. 

God's presence is spiritual evidence that ensures that we are filled with hope and certainty about what is true and good and I am so very blessed by that.

BT