I have a suggestion. I want you to forget talking about faith—your faith, others’ faith, even the Christian faith. Here’s why you should take my advice.
Sometimes a word outlives its usefulness to communicate accurately. When that happens, discard it and choose a different word. For example, “gay” will never, ever again mean cheerful, merry, or brightly colored as it once did. Now “gay” means only one thing: homosexual. “Happy” gay is gone for good.
Something similar has happened to the word “faith.” It’s virtually impossible nowadays to use the word without people subconsciously adding “blind” or “leap of” as modifiers. Indeed, some find it impossible to understand faith in any other way since, in their minds, irrationality is central to any definition of religious faith. For example:
- “Faith is the purposeful suspension of critical thinking.”
- “Faith is convincing yourself to believe something with absolutely no evidence.”
- “Faith is complete confidence in someone or something despite the absence of proof.”
- “If there were evidence for faith, why would you need to call it faith? We use the word ‘faith’ when there isn't any evidence.”
- “This is why religions are called ‘faiths,’ because you believe something in the absence of evidence.”
- “If you feel you have to prove yourself, you don’t have faith.”
- “Asking for proof is a sin because it shows we don’t have faith.”
These are the understandings of faith advanced by such notables as Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and a host of others (thanks to Shane Rosenthal for researching and collecting these examples on his Humble Skeptic podcast). If you persist in using “faith” to describe your own spiritual convictions, that’s the confusion you’re up against.
That’s what they mean when they talk about religious faith. Is this what you mean when you use that word? I hope not, since that isn’t what the biblical authors meant. Pistis, the Greek word for faith, means active trust, and the biblical context reveals over and over again that this trust is based on evidence like reliable witnesses, rational reflection, and convincing proofs.
Linguistically, the understanding of faith as a blind, irrational leap is a recent development, not entering into common use in the English language until the early 20th century. Before then, no one thought of faith as mindless.
The 21,000-page Oxford English Dictionary—the most definitive source on historical word usage for the English language—has no reference to faith as belief bereft of evidence. Not a whisper. Instead, faith in earlier times meant a step of confident trust based on good reasons like established fact, trustworthy testimony, and evidence of history—the biblical definition, in other words.
Google’s Ngram Viewer charts the occurrence of words or phrases in books scanned by Google dating back to the 1500s. According to their analysis, the first reference to “leap of faith” didn’t occur until the 1920s. Within a few decades, though, the new definition began to dominate. Now it’s everywhere, even in churches, sadly. That’s why I want you to stop using the word. It no longer means what it used to mean.
So, what’s the alternative?
With determined skeptics, there’s little value in struggling to convince them they’re using the biblical word “faith” in an unbiblical way. You can try, but usually they’re not going to listen. No matter. Instead, use an end-around.
When talking about your own act of faith, use the word “trust.” When talking about the content of your beliefs, use the word “convictions”—e.g., you put your trust (not faith) in Christ based on your confidence in your Christian convictions (not faith).
Instead of saying that you believe in the resurrection (“belief” words have the same liability), say, rather, “I’m convinced Jesus rose from the dead,” or just, “Jesus rose from the dead.” These statements invite a request for reasons, which you can then give.
With anyone who continues to insist that all religious faith is blind, don’t fight them. Let the word go. Instead, simply say, “Okay, then, I guess I don’t have faith. I have confident convictions based on good reasons.” Force the revisionists to address the evidence rather than allowing them to dismiss your views as mere leaps of blind faith.