Apologetics

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There is no such thing as ‘faithlessness’; everyone has faith in something.

"No human being ever existed without some faith. We all know most of what we know by faith; that is, by belief in what others- parents, teachers, friends, writers, society- tell us." (Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft & Ronald K. Tacelli, IVP 1994,p. 33)

Each of us has, or is developing, a belief system. We are deciding what we believe in; what to trust. These beliefs affect how we live. We trust that our beliefs are true and can be counted on as the basis by which we make decisions in our lives.

However, just because we believe something is true does not make it true. We can believe sincerely and still be sincerely wrong. If we base life decisions on untruths, we are likely to make bad decisions and find ourselves in harmful places and situations.

Here are a few things that can become the objects of our faith:

1) faith in self: the belief that you can figure anything out; the belief that no matter what happens, you can get yourself through it. This is a self-centered position: “I can handle it”; “I’m all I need”.

2) faith in the sense that ‘it will all work out’: a belief that, no matter how you act or what you do, it will all be magically ‘fixed’ somehow. This gives the sense of absolving you of any real responsibility at all.

3) faith in the ledger system: “As long as I do more good things than bad things, I’ll be fine.” We believe that if we do more good things than bad we will be rewarded on some sort of cosmic accounting program that keeps score as we live our lives.

4) faith that simply believes what someone else has taught us: this is the type of faith that we accept from family or friends without every really thinking about it or evaluating it ourselves. It is a mindless faith. It is the faith that says, “I believe it because that’s what I’ve always heard.”

Continued in part 2

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