Why A Believer Might Reject the Faith

This week’s online issue of Christianity Today Magazine published an interview with former Christian artist David Bazan (“I Never Wanted a Hard Heart,” by Drew Dyck, 2-2-2010). Bazan is a “former Christian artist.” He is “former” because he no longer is Christian. He has turned away from the his faith and has become an atheist. What is unusual is that Bazan is 35 years old and has written and sung about his faith for at least a decade. His was not a case of a young person rejecting his parents’ faith once he began to think for himself. Rather, it was a case of rejecting his own faith, a faith hammered out by personally wrestling with the claims of Christ, a faith arrived at as his own conviction, and a faith expressed from his heart in his music. Not that he is the first Christian to turn away from a long and dearly held faith. It happens. But it would seem to take something dramatic for someone like Bazan to turn away from their faith. What would cause such a dramatic turn-about? Perhaps by answering that question, we will better understand our own doubts and vulnerability.

Like many others who turn away from their faith, Bazan offers intellectual reasons for his gradual deconversion. He began to wrestle with big questions, and felt that to be honest he had to pursue those questions. I believe he is right to do so. We all face doubts and questions. We would be dishonest with ourselves and with God if we simply brushed those questions aside or buried them under a façade of unquestioning conviction. The truth is, faith in Christ raises tough questions. There are questions in regard to Jesus’ claims and of the witnesses’ claims to his being raised from the dead, questions of the historical truth of the Bible, and moral questions about a God who allows so much evil and suffering to occur in the world. Perhaps most difficult are when those moral questions become personal through our own suffering and disappointment. Where is God when we suffer tragic loss?

There is no need to fear such questions, whether intellectual or emotional. Perhaps the intellectual questions are the easiest to settle. The Bible and the Christian faith has withstood the test of skeptical examination for 2000 years. Honesty may demand that we pursue such questions when they arise, but it also demands that we pursue and examine all the possible and proposed answers. Too often, however, we use intellectual arguments to cover what is really a problem of the heart. It is not “Can I intellectually and honestly believe this?” so much as it is “Am I willing to surrender my life to this?” That’s more of a heart issue than a head issue. I don’t know if Bazan’s doubt arose out of some deeper heart issue, but I suspect so.

To understand why a believer would give up his or her faith, it might help to ask why an unbeliever would come to faith to begin with. Is it purely an intellectual decision? I’d like to think that we all came to faith after having pursued all the possible questions and all the possible answers, and have concluded intellectually, based on the evidence, that Jesus is the Son of God. But who of us can say we did? Hopefully we at least considered the evidence and concluded it was reasonable enough to give our lives to. But even then, we still had to make an emotional decision. We had to wrestle with questions like, “Do I need Jesus? Am I willing to surrender everything for Jesus? Is it worth the cost?” If coming to the faith involved a combination of intellectual and emotional considerations, leaving the faith would seem to as well. When intellectual doubts arise, don’t be afraid to examine those doubts. But we may need to examine our heart even closer.

Is Faith Rational?

While most people have faith in at least something (whether in God and the Bible or Allah and the Koran or Darwin and Science), how many people could give an accurate definition of what faith is? Is faith an irrational belief is something you can never prove? Do you have to park your brains to have faith? I guess it depends on how you define faith. To many, faith starts where knowledge leaves off. Mark Twain said, “Faith is believing in something you know is not true.” I'll admit, that might accurately describe some people's faith. People believe all kinds of irrational things, and sometimes even give their lives for it. But is that the nature of Biblical faith? That is, is faith as it is described in the Bible an irrational belief in something you can never prove?

The Bible itself gives us a definition of faith. In the New Testament book of Hebrews, chapter 11, we have an entire treatise on faith, beginning with a definition and then illustrated in the lives of men and women of faith from throughout Biblical history. Verse 1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11.1).

At its most basic level, faith has to do with that which we cannot see or have not yet obtained, and yet it is both an assurance and a conviction of the reality of those unseen things. Faith is not simply a weak wish or a leap in the dark. Though many people believe in things for no other reason than that is what they have been taught or raised with, true Biblical faith is a conviction based on sound evidence. This is seen throughout the Bible, especially in the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and the book of Acts, the latter of which gives us the record of the early Christians as they sought to testify to their belief in Jesus and his resurrection from the dead.

The Gospels are records based on eye-witness accounts (cf. Luke 1.1-4; John 20.26-31), as is Acts (Acts 1.1-4). In Acts we see the apostles constantly reasoning from the evidence in order to persuade skeptics (Acts 2.21-36; 17.2,4,17; 18.4,19; 19.8,9,26). Their faith was based on firsthand experience, historical and eyewitness testimony, Old Testament predictions, nature, and other forms of evidence. Their faith was not unreasonable, but highly reasonable.

Nonetheless, faith by its very nature relates to “things hoped for” and “things unseen.” Thus, it relates to the unseen realities of the past, present, and future. We may have never seen the Roman Caesars, but we do not doubt they existed. We may have never seen the atomic components that hold matter together, but we do not hesitate to sit down in a chair. And we know all too well what happens when you split those components apart in an explosion. And though we have never seen Jesus in person, we can have a sure conviction that he lived and died and rose again. Enough evidence has been provided. And while we cannot see the present reality of Jesus living and ruling in heaven at the right hand of the Father, we need not doubt it because we have enough evidence. Likewise our hope (confident expectation) of eternal life beyond the grave is an unseen future lived as if it in were the present. These are all unseen, but no less real.

And yet, faith can only exist in the realm of doubt. It is not the same as absolute knowledge in terms of first hand experience. Whenever we board an airplane, we must place our complete confidence (faith) in the pilot who will fly it, the mechanics who worked on it, the engineers who designed it, and the Air Traffic Controllers who will guide it (not to mention the airport security services who protect it). Yet though we do not really know with absolute certainty that they have all done or will do their jobs correctly, we get on the plane. That is faith. But if there was no room for doubt, there would be no need for faith. As Paul said, “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5.7). Faith does not mean we never have doubts. It only means that we do not let doubts prevent us from acting on our faith.