Where's the Proof?

Pastor Dan, in a culture that places such a heavy emphasis on empiricism and evidence, why do you believe in God? What's so special about the God in whom you believe that makes you not demand evidence for his outrageous claims? -Joseph

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Thanks for writing in, Joseph!

I've actually been sitting on this one for awhile, weighing how precisely to answer. I know that this particular question is a problem for a lot of those who deal with me on ANF and elsewhere, trying to figure out how I do this when it seems so unintuitive to them, almost anathema to contemporary thought. 

How do I follow a God for whom I have no evidence? Simply put, I don't.

Of course it isn't ACTUALLY that simple. If I had the sort of evidence that you could publish in a Scientific Journal or something like that, I probably would have done so. Of course, if I had that kind of evidence, then I also wouldn't be doing the faith thing I talk about so much around here. 

So what, precisely, am I doing?

I often get irritated when people dismiss faith as something inherently childish, like believing in the tooth fairy, or completely imaginary, like deciding that I think Hogwarts is real and waiting on my letter. Such comparisons are obviously dismissive and, when shared in the hearing of believers, usually intentionally insulting, hence my irritation, but the comparisons miss the point. I am not simply choosing to believe in an abstract concept. My faith is placed in a being I have spoken to, conversed with. I don't do faith from a place of pure abstract... but rather from experience.

Faith is a confusing subject, all the more so for people who have no real experience with it. Plenty of people who claim faith actually work from a position of internally confirming abstracts. I believe in the Bible, why? Because the Bible told me to. These are often the same people who react so violently to any kind of challenge to their faith, because they act as if they come from a place of certainty and proof when even casual observation can tell you that they're not. This leads to narrow Biblical Literalism and other forms of blinkered existence I have talked about elsewhere. They use the word faith, but deal instead on imagined proofs of the more mundane variety.

Faith is not simple acceptance of abstract concepts. It's a sort of sense, another paradigm of awareness that is difficult to convey to someone who does not share it. Imagine trying to convey concepts of sight to someone who is blind, or sound to someone who is deaf. Imagine then being in a courtroom filled with people who were blind and giving testimony. You saw what you saw, but all they want to know is, "Yes, but what did you hear? What did you smell? What did you feel? What did you taste?"

If all you have is visual, then it won't mean much to them. But it doesn't make it any less real to you.

What I have is evidence that is sufficient for me, but that I simultaneously recognize is not sufficient to make my case unassailable. I could just be crazy. This is a possibility, or deluded. Maybe I am like the child who believes in the tooth fairy, clinging to my evidence without recognizing it as the intricate deception placed by someone smarter than I am. I do not think this is the case, but I obviously can't prove it.

Beyond that, it's also possible that I see what I see through rose-colored glasses, as it were. It's possible that a lifetime of Christianity made me inclined to interpret what I experience through faith sense as confirmation of the Christian God, rather than something else. Again, I do not believe that is the case, but I'd be an idiot to not recognize the possibility.

These are all possible, and so I know that people need to do faith on their own. Senses need honing, Palates need to be developed, and so while I am always eager to answer questions of faith, I know that very few people are ever in the same place on that path of development, and like any sense, open to different forms of interpretation.

So how do I believe without evidence? I don't. But in the same vein, I recognize that I cannot force others to believe based on that same evidence, because in the end, that simply isn't how faith works.