Faith - the only means to ascertain truth

I recently ran across a blog written by a person who had lost their faith. They were talking about prayer and stated,

"It became obvious to me that I was talking to the air- no answers, no response of any kind...Being a scientist, I dug into the literature for any studies on the efficacy of prayer. Lo and behold, there were actual, controlled studies that had been done. And the result? Drum roll, please….. nada, nil, zip, zilch, zero… no efficacy at all."

Below was my response. I do not link to the original blog because Jesus stated that "Things that cause people to sin must come, but woe to those they come through. It would be better for that person to have a millstone tied around their neck and cast into the sea, than for them to cause one of these little ones [innocent ones] to stumble." In other words, I don't want you to be influenced negatively by satan's illegitimate arguments that have caused others to lose their faith. The faith is based on the truth, and the only way to know the truth, as I explain below, is to hear it and believe it.

This brings up an interesting presupposition. It is presupposing that science is a more accurate yardstick for measuring truth than faith. Now, I know this sounds like a cop-out, but think about this logically for a second. "The truth", whatever that may be, is out there, and is objective, even if it is not discoverable. The truth about life, about prayer, about our existence, and whether or not our lives possess purpose, or whether our longing for purpose is meaningless in itself. The truth is self-existent...even if not a single person believes in it...even if it lies undiscovered for eons.The only way to completely ascertain an objective truth is...(to quote a phrase, "drum roll, please")...by faith. Any other means of ascertaining truth is incomplete, and has the capability for error. For example, science relies on what we know and have observed. But science is always changing as we learn more. When we say that something is "scientificially proven", we need to clarify which science we're talking about. Are we talking about the science of 2007, the science of 2099, the science of 1700 (when flies spontaneously generated from meat) or the science of 1342 (when the earth was flat). Science changes. And as such, using science as a means to judge truth is like using a rubber yardstick to judge whether the golden yardstick is accurate.

What I mean when I say that faith is the only means to ascertain the truth is this: If someone tells you something that is absolutely true, then the only way you're going to know for sure that it's truth and to walk in the way of that truth is by taking a leap of faith, and believing in it. And the only way to do this is to first HEAR the truth. That's why scripture says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by a word of Christ (some translations incorrectly say "the word of God" instead of "a word of Christ"). This implies that God has the responsibility to speak to us, and we have the responsibility to listen and believe.

So what if the creator of the universe reveals "the truth" to us, and it doesn't strike us as "the truth". Is that because "the truth" is not true, or is it because we need to make an adjustment in our thinking? The danger is that we will use one of our rubber yardsticks (science, our feelings, logic, popular opinion, what we heard "the experts" say, what influential people in our lives have said, or a worldview appeals to us) to invalidate the golden yardstick of "truth" and adopt an untrue viewpoint. We compare the golden yardstick to our rubber yardsticks, but rather than conclude our rubber yardsticks are off, we illogically proclaim the golden yardstick to be inaccurate.

That being said, let's examine prayer from the standpoint of scripture, not science. A scientific study of prayer will only look at prayer's effectiveness in getting what we ask for. But scripture points out that getting what you ask for is not prayer's purpose:

1. Jesus taught us by his example to pray, "not my will, but yours [heavenly Father's] be done." This demonstrates that a proper balance of prayer recognizes that what God wants trumps what we want. In other words, we are to pray for what God wants to happen; our wants take a back seat.

2. Many scriptural illustrations (Job, Joseph, Jesus) show people going through great hardships and suffering that may seem purposeless from the individual's point of view, but from God's point of view have a purpose. It is possible those purposes may not be revealed in our lifetime. Consider someone who dies of cancer, despite all the prayers to save their life. The prophet Isaiah said, "Righteous people die...and no one understands. For the righteous man is taken away from evil to come." But Depeche Mode looks at the same circumstance and concludes that "God has a sick sense of humor." Who is looking at the circumstance correctly? Who has "the truth"? What about the missionary who spent an entire lifetime without a single convert, and who never lived to see that his efforts had prepared that area for a great revival when future missionaries came? We almost NEVER see God's plan. That's why faith is MANDATORY in order to walk in the level of God's purposes. That's why Jesus said we have to DENY OURSELVES in order to follow him. Again, our wants take a back seat to God's agenda.

3. Concerning prayer, "the truth" is not determined by what we feel, whether we feel we are talking to the air or whether we feel like God is sitting right next to us. The bottom line is that "the truth" simply exists. The truth simply exists that God hears the prayer of a repentant person. Yes, the hearing of our prayers is conditional. Scripture says God will not hear selfish prayers or prayers from those who are unwilling to admit their wrongdoings (i.e. unwilling to listen to God's voice of truth exposing our error) The truth is there. And the truth is speaking to all of us. The challenge for us is to believe the "Bible yardstick" of truth that says God is near, when our "feelings yardstick" and "logic yardstick" and "science yardstick" tell us we're talking to the air.

Prayer must be based upon complete trust in God. Even when we are struggling with our trust in God, we must choose to open ourselves up to him again, relying on the truth of scripture that we have saturated our minds with. Our understanding of life compared to God's is analogous to a 4-yr-old's to his parents. The parents say, "Don't go in in the street", and "Don't stick a fork in the electrical outlet." The 4-yr-old may not be able to comprehend electrical theory, nor how his cells would be crushed by an oncoming car. The 4-yr-old is simply faced with a single momentous decision: Do I trust my parents mean the best for me, and obey them? Or do I decide that the rubber ruler of my 4-yr-old yearnings are better for me than my parents' rules? It all boils down to trust in what God has revealed. It all comes down to faith.