Hello to all. I hope your week with the
Lord has been amazing as you seek out what “faith” is. I know I have been
growing in the Lord and have been experiencing what it is to live by faith,
believing in the Lord’s plan.
It is exciting to be starting this
journey on the blog and I hope the readers will find some gems of truth in it. I’m
hoping to basically loosely follow our sermon series and cater this blog
towards people who need a little more explanation or simply need encouragement.
I will also write updates in Japanese so to allow our Japanese readers to
follow. I’m currently reading a book by William Lane Craig on apologetics and
thought it would be a good opportunity to also share some interesting insights
about why we believe what we believe.
As many of you know, I was in Minnesota
from 2004 to 2010. During that time, I attended a Japanese church and had the privilege
of being a part of the ministry. Being one of the only Japanese services in
town, we attracted numerous exchange students from Japan. One such student, Mr.
A, was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. He specialized in
genetic engineering and was a sharp man. Although he was an atheist, he was
curious about our church and found it very comfortable. One day as I was discussing
Christianity with him, the conversation turned into a very cordial debate.
Neither of us was trying to convert the other, but we simply discussed the
meaning of faith. He had a hard time with the concept and kept stating that
having faith in something invisible and intangible was quite difficult. I
acknowledged his conundrum but pointed out that many things in life took faith.
Sitting on a chair, crossing the road, believing in another person’s commitment
or love, believing in the doctor’s ability to heal etc. As though a light bulb
went on in his head, he nodded in agreement. The next thing that came out of
his mouth was rather surprising. He said, “Yes, you’re right. Everything does
take faith. Many of the scientific theories that we propose are simply
theories. It takes faith to believe that those are correct and will yield the
same results if we were to test them over and over again. Actually, technically
scientific laws, such as 1 + 1 = 2, are also a theory and we assume that it is representing
reality.”
I found this statement rather profound
and use this story even to this day. We humans put a surprising amount of “faith”
into many things. We believe that the scientists are correct in assuming or
calculating the earth’s age, that the doctors have come up with the correct medicine,
that there are such things as morality, that our fate is in our own hands etc. Everything
in life takes some form of faith. It even takes faith to believe in your own
mind, logic or empirical experience!
Having faith in God is just another form
of faith we utilize in our lives. As with anything, we believe that the cough
drops contain some form of cure that will help our cold. We experience the
result once we take it. In a similar way, we experience God’s power once that
step of faith is made. As Noah trusted God in his statement and plan, we are
given a choice to trust God’s voice. Are you willing to take that step?
