Intellectualism and Faith
July 17, 2024
Intellectualism can only take people so far — either closer to or further from — the personal and dynamic faith in God, Jesus, and the Bible — the book which reveals God’s intent for Humanity. You see, “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” — Hebrews 11:6, Berean Standard Bible.
So, a purely intellectual approach cannot get anyone there. At some time or another, a person must choose to take a blind leap. However, the blind leap doesn’t produce faith, either. Only a person’s earnestness can land their feet on solid ground… Faith is that solid ground.
From childhood, and for a long time after that, I never used to believe. However, I now believe because God changed my life. He rescued me from a mental disaster. He changed my heart, changing me from the inside out. He continues to develop my open-minded but rational thinking. He continues teaching me how to discern the right direction, showing me the dangers of taking the wrong way. He opens up my understanding, line upon line, while reading the Bible verses. Beyond those wonderful acts, He has saved me from death physically, and mentally, and even once from being murdered for an off the cuff comment made to the wrong person, at the wrong time, taken the wrong way.
So, you see, my feet have landed on solid ground.
In those ways, my faith has both substance and evidence — just like the writer of Hebrews defines it. My experienced faith is melded with my wife’s faith who also has the same testimony: God is real and has had a dynamic effect on her life, too.
Basically, God not only has given us the real power to choose — a freedom not beset by harmful or hurtful inclinations — natural or unnatural — but He has blessed us with the gift of a dynamic and personal and living relationship with Himself — quite similar to the individuals and peoples in the nations recorded in the Old Testament. (That, by the by, also gives us confidence that those stories are true and are, therefore, valid for the benefit of our learning.)
Furthermore, if the record of Jesus is false, “…then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ is for this life alone, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.…” — 1 Corinthians 1:18–20, Berean Standard Bible.
Are our experiences, beneficial changes, and relationships somehow a fantasy, a delusion, or however a skeptic chooses to frame it? Are we just plain gullible and easily deceived? Are the both of us liars?
I was so fortunate to grow up in a generation that was not only questioning, but seeking the answers, not giving up, but climbing those mountains, walking through the valleys.
It makes me sad that not everyone made it through to the other side. That generation gave me so much. That is partially my impetus for writing essays about God, Jesus, and the Bible. Perhaps they got lost in the woods and maybe they will discover the reality of God, the hope that is in Jesus, and the map within the pages of the Bible. There they can find out how to call through to the Park Ranger and be rescued out of those dark woods…
