I wonder if in the war against modernity and it’s Enlightenment forbearers, the church hasn’t, in fact, become a slave to them.

I’ve found in my own journey, chasing knowledge (one could say, certainty) has thwarted my faith as often as it has nurtured it.

And I find it interesting that as essential as “faith” seems like it should be to “The Faith,” we often try to rationalize and materialize the really complicated and intangible tenants of Christianity. It’s almost like we’re trying to take the faith out of our faith.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there are excellent arguments for a rational creator who oversees and intimately involves himself with life on Earth… but there are good arguments to disprove my apologetic.

At the end of the day, I’d be foolish to assert that my motivations for following Yahweh as revealed by Jesus in the New Testament are purely formed out of impartial, well-reasoned conclusions.

For better or worse, I do think the evidence slants towards the existence of at the very least, a god (billions of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and other religions contemporary and ancient, seem to agree). However, why I am biased toward believing Christian apologies rather than Jewish or Muslim is largely anecdotal experience and social surroundings which have shaped me to see the message of Jesus as compelling. How could I deny this and remain intellectually honest?

If such uncertainty causes unease to swell in your body, as it does mine, perhaps consider we have been more formed by our fight against Modernity than by faith.

I don’t mean to promote strict relativism here. I do believe in truth, and, as cheesy as it sounds, I believe truth has a name, Jesus.

What I’m saying is that it would be disingenuous for me to pretend as if I have arrived at this faith through sheer reason… I didn’t. That’s an uncomfortable tension to live in, given the church’s centuries long battle to prove faith’s reasonability. It’s uncomfortable, yet it’s also freeing.

I think Modernity naturally leads to Post-Modernity because reason and science are not equipped to explain reality and human experience. Again, a cliche, but the more we know the more we know we don’t know.

As I gather proofs and anecdotal experience and stories, I realize I don’t have many grounded, scientific, rationally impenetrable answers for a lot of my questions. This realization can be incredibly destabilizing because we’re taught, even in the church, that unless you have full-proof reasons for why you believe what you believe, then you should change your beliefs.

But this assumes a modernistic, Enlightenment perspective of the world that through science and logic, we can discover everything there is to know about the world. I fundamentally disagree with this assumption. There is a spiritual aspect to the human experience that cannot be tapped into through the scientific process.

I don’t have fool-proof answers, but I have faith… through the times I’ve experienced what I’d call “Christ’s presence” in my life and the times I’ve been led to repentance and softening of my heart; the times my heart and priorities have totally changed with not l no reasonable explanation; the times I’ve overcome sin; the times I’ve been lead into heart wrenching grief (instead of turning away from it, as I’m naturally wont to do); the times I’ve seen and felt Jesus in my friends; the times the church has been at my doorstep to help; the times I’ve felt or seen viscerally a confirmation of Christ’s unlimited love for me.

These are the things which give me faith and hope that others, too, can experience Jesus in these ways.

But can I say for certain that, if you live life exactly as I’ve lived life and believe exactly as I believe you’ll develop similar faith? No, that’s proposterous–there are days I wake up and wonder if I’m truly a Christian. Throughout my life, I have fallen smack on my face in failure so many times I can’t recount them all. I’m a miserable Christian.

Can I say with certainty God exists? For me, the evidences give weight to that answer being “yes, I believe so.”

I can’t give certainty: I can only tell you my experience. The only thing I am certain of–not because it’s a rational conclusion, but because my life experience has embedded deep deep deep in my bones–that if there is a God and if Jesus is the full expression of him, he loves you with a love stronger and with more persistence than any physical force I’ve seen on earth.

It brings tears as I write this; on one hand, I’m tempted to see it as trivial, but my life depends on it. Maybe because I feel so viscerally my own fragility and failure and sin. Perhaps it’s because I feel like I’m walking a faith tightrope and could fall off any day and wake up with no faith at all.

But I cling to this intangible metaphysical hope: that Jesus is more than just a mere hope, but a real, tangible, breathing Being who loves me with an unlimited and everlasting love and is strong enough to see me to the other side, even if I make all the wrong moves in the meantime. I cling to this hope because I know of no other way.

Where else will I go?

C.W.