On Being Convinced I

Over spring break, I was doing some outreach on the beach out at PCB, Florida, and I ran into a guy who was really familiar to me. Not because I had ever met him before. It was just that he was in the same place that I've been and that a lot of my friends have been. He understood the gospel in an intellectual sense and was willing to consider why it might be relevant to his life. In some ways, he really wanted to believe and follow Christ. But he just wasn't convinced. How can you be sure that this Jesus and His gospel is the truth? How do you really know, 100 %? Man, it would sure be a lot easier of God did some of His parting-Red-Sea-pillar-of-fire miracles right now, and then I'd believe, no problem.

I didn't know what to say to that. It's true, a lot of people just can't make that jump to belief, and in the Bible and in life, God says those people aren't showing the kind of faith He asks for. On the other hand, I have trouble telling other people to just believe and go with it. I have trouble telling myself that.

Here is something true. We often believe things we can't prove. Most people believe in true love, that it exists, and that they know when they find it, and I don't think they're wrong when they say and live like they believe in it even though they can't point to something concrete and say, "That is love." Scientists can't prove gravity -- they can just see its effects and rationalize that something like gravity must exist by the way things are made to move. They can see some of its effects, they can see that there is a clear, consistent nature to it, but they can't purport to have conquered gravity in a sense of understanding and deconstruction. But we all believe in gravity, and you'd be a fool to say that gravity doesn't exist just because we can't point to something that is definitively gravity. You'd say, look at the world around you, look at the way everything moves. It must be.

There is some wisdom in thinking of God in the same terms.