HOW DO WE KNOW THAT WE HAVE FAITH?

Well, everyone has faith – some in themselves, others in various gods of their choice, and others in their “higher power,” whatever that might be. However, these aren’t a saving or a Biblical faith. Therefore, the question should become, “How do I know that I have a Biblical faith?”

There are many possible answers. However, Jesus had placed a lot of emphasis on our response to the Scriptures:

·       So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide (“continue” or “hold to my teachings” – NIV) in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32, 51 ESV)

This is a very easy test. We can ask ourselves, “Do we read Scripture and want to understand what it is teaching us?” However, is this always an indication of saving faith? It seems so. Jesus continued:

·       “Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word…Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” (John 8:43, 47)

If we are of God, we listen to His Words to obey them. If we are not of God and lack saving faith, we cannot bear to listen to His Words.

This simple test answers a parallel question, “Are we of the elect, the chosen?” If we hear and obey His Words, this also proves that we are of the elect. The ordinary person has rejected the Word and has hardened his heart against it. It is contemptable to him (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Through this test, Jesus also assures us that we will not fall away or reject the faith:

·       “When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him [the good shepherd, Jesus], for they know his voice [or teachings]. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” (John 10:4-5)

·       “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. (John 10:27-29)

Jesus also warned that the Word, the Light, also sets us apart from the world, as it also set Him apart:

·       “I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.” (John 8:37)

Jesus also warned that this would be our fate:

·       “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.” (John 15:18-20)

Having rejected the Word, they will even convince themselves that they are doing a righteous service by eliminating us. Such is the power of deception to those who welcome self-deception:

·       “…Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.” (John 16:2-3 ESV)

They have not known our Lord because they have rejected the Light in favor of the darkness of self-deception (John 3:19-20). Sadly, many of those who call themselves “Christians” hate the Light of the Word and also those who bear the Word. Jesus had often prophesied that brother would turn against brother (Matthew 24:10-12; 10:21). When I question them about the basis of their faith, either they admit that they pick-and-choose among the verses of the Bible, according to their tastes, or they make use of many sources. Often, they claim that the evangelical is naïve for just taking the Bible as is and present many reasons why we should doubt the Scriptures. In any case, they have failed the faith-test.

As Jesus had taught, our response to the Word of God also determines whether or not we love our Savior:

·       “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him…If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.” (John 14:21-24)

I can love my wife in many ways – doing the dishes, taking her out, or by rubbing her feet. I cannot love God in any of these ways. There is only one way to love Him – by keeping His Word. If I refuse to love Him in this manner, I do not love Him at all.

If, instead, we have decided that there are parts of the Scriptures that we will follow and other parts that we will not follow, we have made ourselves judges over the Word of God and not its servants. This is not faith in God but in our own tastes and judgments.

I’m sorry if my black and white presentation has left out the nuances and the grey areas, and there are those in-between areas, as Jesus had indicated:

·       And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions. (Mark 12:34)

Some are on the way.

BELIEF IN EVOLUTION IS A SLIPPERY SLOPE AS MANY HAVE LEARNED

I have seen the way that theistic evolution (the belief that we can be a Christian and an evolutionist - TE) devastates the faith of believers, rendering the teachings of the Scriptures beyond comprehension (even making it subject to the “truths” of evolution). If Genesis 1-11 are not teaching history, along with theology, as TE claims, then all of teachings of the Scriptures will be regarded with uncertainty. Consequently, the beliefs of the TEs have become almost indistinguishable from their university community.

Let me try to explain how. Any lie will eventually requires other lies to cover for it. The same principle pertains to the TE claim that Genesis is not about history but merely about spiritual lessons. Let me give you one simple example to show how this claim will pervert our interpretations of even the NT. Jesus explicitly claimed that Genesis 1 and 2 are historical as well as theological (and perhaps even poetical):

·       He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female (Gen. 1), and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh' (Gen. 2:24)? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has [historically] joined together, let not man separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

Had not God actually and historically created and joined Adam and Eve together, Jesus’ argument would have fallen apart.

Even worse, if Jesus’ words do not suffice to prove that He believed that the events of Genesis 1-11 are history, then there is little reason to think that any of NT commentary on these chapters should be regarded as an affirmation of their historicity.

The TE has taken the liberty to twist any verse into conformity with his initial twisting -  that Genesis 1-11 is not about history. However, once he takes this liberty, there is no end to other liberties he will take to bring Scripture into conformity with his worldview. However, by exercising such “liberty,” he can come up with just about any interpretation he wants. How does he justify this? By convincing Himself that we must judge the Scriptures from our own “superior” vantage point. What then happens to his faith?

Consequently, if the theological foundation of the Bible - Genesis - isn’t sound, nothing built upon it is sound and secure. Professor Karl Giberson, the former co-head of the Biologos Foundation, a TE group committed to advocating for evolution to the churches, had written:

·       Acid is an appropriate metaphor for the erosion of my fundamentalism, as I slowly lost confidence in the Genesis story of creation and the scientific creationism that placed this ancient story within the framework of modern science. Dennett’s universal acid dissolved Adam and Eve; it ate through the Garden of Eden; it destroyed the historicity of the events of creation week. It etched holes in those parts of Christianity connected to the stories—the fall, “Christ as the second Adam,” the origins of sin, and nearly everything else that I counted sacred. (Saving Darwin, 9-10)

Giberson claimed that the corrosive power of evolution would now stop after he had kicked aside these foundation blocks. However, he had stepped out on a slippery slope which eventually led him to reject the God of the OT. By now, he might even be an atheist.

PROOF OF HEAVEN AND HELL

A militant Facebook atheist charged: “Christianity teaches kids they are no good, they are broken and need fixing, and they can't fix themselves, and deserve hell fire. And then they invented a fix.”

I responded:

“If heaven and hell are realities, then we need to be warned even more than if there is a shooter on our street.

Do you have any evidence against these realities? I haven’t heard of any yet. If we are convinced that they exist, we are morally responsible for not warning.

What has convinced us that heaven and hell exist? Let me list a few reasons:

·       Intuitively, we know that divine punishment exists. This is why are obsessively trying to prove that we are good and worthy people, even as we deny these eternal realities.

·       There are many reasons – miracles, fulfilled prophecies, internal and external consistency - to regard the testimony of Jesus and the writers of the Bible as reliable sources. The Holy Spirit working through the truths of the Bible has changed many lives and nations. Don’t you think it odd that believing in “fairy tales” has proven to be quite adaptable! In comparison, communist/atheist nations are all failed experiments.

·       There is a lot of evidence for the demonic world. Not only do all the major world religions acknowledge them, but many of us have had direct experiences with demons. My extended atheistic family had all observed our two little girl cousins working a Ouija Board, even blindfolded. None could even provide a single naturalistic explanation. The evil we had observed close-range for hours was utterly overwhelming. What we had seen and heard confirmed the Biblical revelation, at least for me.”

He responded: “The purpose [of hell] is to scare people into church and to keep them there. Because an eternal punishment for nothing else but unbelief makes absolutely no sense.”

I responded:

“You don’t know their purpose. Instead, the Apostles were concerned about faithfully reporting the history of Jesus. They portray themselves in such a negative light. This demonstrates that they weren’t pursuing their own self-serving agenda. Besides, many or all died as martyrs without ever recanting what they had written. Had their motives been self-serving, they assuredly would have recanted.

You also claim that an eternal hell makes “absolutely no sense.” Perhaps this is true from your own limited perspective. For others, it makes a lot of sense:

·       It is because we are convinced that God will judge that we don’t retaliate against those who have hurt us. Instead we love, knowing their final fate, if they continue to refuse to repent of their sins.

·       Although we lack an exhaustive picture of either heaven or hell, it seems likely that our judgment is primarily self-chosen (John 3:17-20) – the perfect justice. People chose what they want. They hate the idea of God now (as many atheists have admitted). Therefore, they will hate Him even more afterward, when His scrutinizing Light is even more intense. Consequently, they will flee from His presence to a place of torment, perhaps even self-torment.

·       Intuitively, we know that we deserve punishment (Romans 1:32). This is why we spend our lives trying to prove that we are good and worthy people. I think that this is also the best way to understand masochism (self-punishment). Since we know that we deserve punishment, self-punishment has been shown to reduce stress, at least for a little while.

·       A number of studies have shown that the belief in an eternal judgment reduces criminality.

·       Knowing the reality of this hell (perhaps of self-torment, as I had experienced for years) makes us more grateful for the gift of Life and willing to serve our Master.

I also wanted to add, “You won’t believe no matter what I say because you don’t belong to Him,” but I didn’t.

THE POOR, CHRISTIANITY, AND GOVERNMENT ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS

Christians are often charged with not following Jesus regarding help for the poor. Admittedly, we fall short in this area as we do in every other area. Nevertheless, many churches sponsor programs to help the poor.

However, this isn’t the basis of the charge. Instead, it comes down to how we vote and which party we support. The charge goes something like this:

·       If you Evangelicals really followed Jesus, you would vote Democratic. It is the Democrats who show concern for the underprivileged.

It is true that the Democratic Party has championed socialistic reforms like entitlement programs (namely welfare), income redistribution, and equal access to medical treatment. Meanwhile, the Republicans place more value on a free economy, characterized by capitalism, individual initiative, and a mixture of protections for the poor.

While the Republicans might seem to be more heartless than the Democrats, there have been a number of Black conservatives suggesting that it is actually the other way around. According to economist Thomas Sowell, the Black community had been far better off before White liberalism had gotten a hold of them:

·       Many things that are supposed to help blacks actually have a track record of making things worse. Minimum wage laws have had a devastating effect in making black teenage unemployment several times higher than it once was.

·       In later years, as the minimum wage was repeatedly raised to keep up with inflation, black teenage unemployment from 1971 through 1994 was never less than 3 times what it was in 1948, and ranged as high as more than 5 times the 1948 level. It also became far higher than the unemployment rate of whites the same age.

In, “Shame: How America’s Past Sins have Polarized Our Country,” Shelby Steele argues that White guilt, the terror that Whites experience of being labeled a “racist,” has harmed the Black community:

·       It has spawned a new white paternalism toward minorities since the 1960s that, among other things, has damaged the black family more profoundly than segregation ever did.

How did this serve to undermine the black family? Steele argues that white indulgences, economic entitlement programs, have served to disempower those people that White guilt had intended to help:

·       Post-1960s welfare policies, the proliferation of “identity politics” and group preferences, and all the grandiose social interventions of the War on Poverty and the Great Society—all this was meant to redeem the nation from its bigoted past, but paradoxically, it also invited minorities to make an identity and a politics out of grievance and inferiority.

Walter E. Williams, professor of economics, George Mason University, does not think that the problems that the Black community are now experiencing are a product of slavery, Jim Crow, or even systemic racism, but of welfare programs, white guilt, and “political correctness”:

·       A major part of the solution should be the elimination of public and private policy that rewards inferiority and irresponsibility. Chief among the policies that reward inferiority and irresponsibility is the welfare state. When some people know that they can have children out of wedlock, drop out of school and refuse employment and suffer little consequence, one should not be surprised to see the growth of such behavior. The poverty rate among blacks is about 30 percent. It’s seen as politically correct to blame today’s poverty on racial discrimination, but that’s nonsense. Why? The poverty rate among black intact husband-and-wife families has been in the single digits for more than two decades.

According to Williams, “progressive” political correctness has undermined the largely black schools, failing to hold the students to the same standards as others:

·       Education is one of the ways out of poverty, but stupid political correctness stands in the way for many blacks. For example, a few years ago, a white Charleston, South Carolina, teacher frequently complained of black students calling her a white b—-, white m—–f—–, white c— and white ho. School officials told her that racially charged profanity was simply part of the students’ culture and that if she couldn’t handle it, she was in the wrong school.

Failing to hold students accountable for anti-social behavior corrupts schools and diminishes the possibility of obtaining a good education. According to Williams, over-indulgent liberal policies have de-motivated blacks by holding them to lower standards:

·       Many whites are ashamed and saddened by our history of slavery, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination. As a result, they often hold blacks accountable to standards and conduct they would never accept from whites. A recent example is black students at colleges such as NYU, UC Berkeley, UCLA and Oberlin demanding racially segregated housing. Spineless college administrators have caved to their demands. These administrators would never even listen to a group of white students demanding white-only housing accommodations. These administrators and other guilt-ridden whites have one standard of conduct for whites and a lower standard for blacks.

White guilt holds blacks to a lower standard, approving their racial prejudices, while penalizing Whites for the same. This can only serve to further exclude blacks from white society. Williams claims liberal policies have also made academic excellence more unattainable:

·       Black people can be thankful that racist forms of double standards and public and private policies rewarding inferiority and irresponsibility were not broadly accepted during the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. There would not have been the kind of intellectual excellence and spiritual courage that created the world’s most successful civil rights movement.

Instead of coming to grips with the negative impact of liberal policies, the liberals have instead invented alternative explanations for black failure, including "white privilege" and "systemic racism." What happened to the ideal M.L. King strove to achieve - to judge, not by skin color, but by character? We all need to be treated as equal, responsible, and accountable moral agents, each created in the image of God, instead of paternalistically looking down on those we help.

Can we give in a way that helps the needy recover their sense of dignity? Many Christian aid groups have! In The Tragedy of American Compassion, Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World Magazine, argues that, for 300 years, the church has been doing a good job of addressing the needs of the poor:

·       Faith-based groups a century ago helped millions out of poverty and into homes. Local organizations had the detailed knowledge and flexibility necessary to administer the combination of loving compassion and rigorous discipline that was needed.

Caring for the poor is not an option, it is a Christian duty! However, this duty must be wisely fulfilled, or it will damage the ones we are to help. Therefore, Paul commanded: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).

Sadly, the more that the government has indiscriminately intruded, the less those in need have been willing to submit to Christian programs, which require moral accountability. It has become too easy to accept government no-strings-attached handouts.

In contrast, Christian love sometimes needs to be tough for the sake of providing help that really helps.