Today in my education class, my professor shared an interesting insight with us. Before becoming a school of ed professor, he was a middle school social studies teacher (among other things). Today we got into a limited discussion on teaching sensitive curriculum, such as the evolution vs creationism theory.
He shared with us a story of a time that he allowed his middle school students to debate the issue, asking them, “Do you really want to prove that God exists?” A couple of students got quite bothered by this comment, but my professor stuck an important amendment on to the end of it.
“If we can prove God, we disprove faith. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but faith is an important aspect of the Christian religion.”
My mind quickly sought to make sense of this statement. At first I was offended, but I quickly realized that the insight he was sharing went much deeper than I initially had grasped.
I think, as Christians, we often seek to prove our beliefs. We somewhat panic when our beliefs are questioned, scared to death that we might not be able to back up with factual knowledge the things we so deeply believe.
However, with his statement I am starting to question that. If I am able to point to tangible evidence that God exists, there is no need for faith. If God walked in my front door right now, I would be able to see Him, touch Him, take a picture with Him and put it up as my profile pic. Then I could point to it and say, “See? I told you He’s real.” The same thing goes for all aspects of faith. Believing that God orders our lives, believing that He speaks to us, believing that He created the universe, the list could go on forever. But the fact of the matter is, God doesn’t give us tangible things to hold that He is with us. That is where faith comes in.
Faith is harder to have than tangible proof, but there is something about it that is deeper. I think it is somewhat of a life changing theory for me…especially in the field of education, there is always pressure to prove where you are coming from. I think that there are evidences of our faith in Christ, and I have seen tangible evidence that God exists, and I will save those stories for another day.
I think it is of paramount importance that we remember that faith is a gift, and if God chose to, He could reveal himself tangibly to all humanity. But the gift of faith is one that He allows us, allows us to stretch the bounds of our imagination to think of what He must look like, sound like. He allows us to use our creativity to express His revelations to us in countless ways. And faith allows us to have free will in whether or not we choose to believe in Him.
That is a pretty big God, if you ask me. I haven’t sorted all this out, but it is definitely an interesting concept.
