Skeptical of Skepticism

Skeptical of Skepticism

A few months ago I sat across the table from a friend of mine who told me that she was losing her faith. It has been a slow decline for her as she has listened now for a few years to the doubts of her husband who has now officially declared himself a skeptic of the faith. It began for him by being the most staunch defender of the faith. He read all the books on apologetics. He had his own apologetic website. But then slowly he began to have doubts. Doubts because he couldn't prove that Adam and Eve were the first people on earth. Doubts that science didn't present facts that couldn't be disproved. And putting the full weight of knowing upon his mind, his faith collapsed under the weight.

And now my friend, his wife, finds herself barraged everyday with questions from him. Evidence that he says evolution presents that is irrefutable. And sitting across the table from me, she asked me, Rachel, how can you know? How are you sure that the Bible is true? How can you trust in a God who allows such evil in the world? How can you look at the evidence the scientific community is presenting and hold onto your faith?

These are weighty questions. But I have come to see something very clearly: Doubt is the flip side of the coin of faith. Doubt means that opportunity remains, because the proof has not revealed itself so fully that decision is irrelevant. And so I pose a few questions back to her. For I feel that really for the human condition it is not always so important that we have the right answers, but that we pose the proper questions. Who is qualified to judge? One can only judge perfectly who has ALL truth gathered from infinite wisdom, not limited by perspective.

Suppose if you will that a man who has lived his entire life deep in heart of an African village is suddenly taken to an operation and asked to watch from the observation room. If he knew nothing of medicine, of the nature of cancer and metastasis; if he knew nothing of the danger of leaving a man in such a condition, would he not think it pure unbridled brutality to watch a surgeon,(not knowing his qualifications or skill to do so) render another helpless on a table, raise a knife, open the victims body and cause a bloody wound, only to remove a part of the helpless victim? Would it not look to him like senseless pain? You see he lacks the context. The sense of greater danger to the patient at leaving him alone. And we suppose in our soft human condition that the greatest danger to us lies in being killed or raped or brutalized in this body. It is not. It is a trifle compared to reckoning before a holy God.

And there is another point of concern. If truth binds itself only to theory, to idea, to perception of the mind, what of the incarnation? Why make Truth flesh himself out? Why walk amongst us? My friend's husband has made a critical error in his judgment. He has decided along with the scientific community that the weight of all truth can be gleaned entirely through the sieve of the mind. It can be reduced to theory, and data and observation, not a being with whom we can be intimate and walk. It has turned its back on all means of discovering truth that fall outside the reach of the scientific method. But therein lies the same problem we have in judging. The observer must rely on that which perceives the data to interpret his data for him.

If one sees a circle filled with tiny dots, what is the meaning of that circle? To the modern Westerner it might be the top of a watering can, or a shower head, or the night sky, seen through a telecope. But to the tribal villager in Nepal, it might be no more than a mound of ants in the dirt. The significance of what is seen, is limited to the experience of the observer.

And so I posed this question to my friend. What if you and your husband walk away from the faith because the scientific community’s current conclusions of the lack of evidence to support the claims of the Bible? What if 50 years after your death, they discover one critical piece of evidence that reinterprets all their conclusions on carbon dating? What then? What if the scientific community for all it can see, lacks the breadth, the entirety of knowledge to interpret the data they have? I asked her to do one thing for me and herself on her journey. Remain skeptical of her skepticism. It that not in fact truest form of it?

I asked her to consider another body of evidence as well. Another voice in the stream of history. The voice of believers, who throughout all the ages have spoken similarly of this God of the Scriptures. What of the witness of their blood? Their dying confessions to knowing a God who is so worthy of their trust that death is a small token of such a Savior?

I discovered a poem this year written by a Christian who lived in the Middle Ages. And in spite of entirely different lives, walks, bodies of knowledge and eras, I knew when I read this expression of his walk with the Lord, exactly what he meant.

O Merry Love, strong, ravishing, burning, willful, stalwart,

Unslakened, that brings all my soul to Thy service,

And suffers it to think of nothing but Thee.

Thou challengest for Thyself all that we live;

All that we savour, All that we are.

Thus therefore let Christ be the Beginning of our Love,

Whom we love for Himself. And so we love whatever

Is to be loved ordinately for Him that is the Well of Love,

And in Whose hands we put all that we love and are loved by”

O Love un-departed! O Love Singular! ”We praise Thee,

We preach Thee, by the which we overcome the world;

By Whom we joy and ascend the Heavenly ladder.

In Thy sweetness glide into me; and I commend me and mine

Unto Thee withouten end. ”Richard Rolle (1290-1349)

The Fire of Love and Meaning of Life

And so considering myself a fool according to the wisdom of the world, I bow my knee before an infinite God, a holy Judge, the only Wise God of unsearchable paths and wisdom, and commend myself unto the day when evidence shall overwhelm mankind as a flood. When the clouds will be rolled back as a scroll, and we shall know fully, just as we are fully known. When our eyes shall behold Him on whose thigh is written the name King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Oh what a horrible day when the truth shall be revealed to those who denied the Truth. Oh let us proclaim if necessary with the voice of our blood, this King of Glory before the world has the evidence it so brashly demands.

Rachel Deffinbaugh, July 30, 2005