I’ve read heartfelt stories, tales of surviving the streets, enduring the horrors of war, dealing with economic hardship, chronic illness, and even the death of a child. In each one, faith is described as the only thing that carried them through the darkest corners of life. These experiences carry weight and a raw honesty that commands respect. They shape us, stir the soul, and spark something that, at the very least, feels like faith. Yet when we peel back the layers, a question lingers: is faith merely what we feel in the fire, or is it something more, something grounded beyond our physical and emotional scars?
Faith, at least the biblical kind of faith, might be born in suffering, but it is forged in truth. It is not merely a reflex in response to hardship or a balm for pain or some other sort of coping mechanism. It is a deliberate trust in what is real, even when emotions pull us elsewhere. We all know, deep down, that emotions make a shaky foundation. They shift with the wind, up one day and down the next, swayed by mood, memory, circumstance, and even the weather. No one builds a house on such shifty sand and expects it to stand.
Reason, on the other hand, offers solid ground. When it is rooted in evidence and sound logic, something objective, it becomes something that does not bend with our feelings or falter under life’s weight. Faith, rightly understood, is not about turning off one’s mind, ignoring evidence or clinging to contradictions. It is about looking carefully at what God has revealed, His creation, His promises, His character, His acts, concluding that they are trustworthy and then acting accordingly, whether our emotions are in sync or not.
Abraham did not prepare to sacrifice Isaac because he felt some sort of mystical prompting that he couldn’t understand or even articulate. On the contrary, he reasoned that God could raise the dead (Hebrews 11:19). His faith was not a leap into the dark, it was a step onto a foundation he had tested and found firm. That is not anti-reason, it is the fruit of reason, a trust born from rational confidence.
Biblical faith often runs against emotion. Jesus in Gethsemane did not feel like going to the cross but He resolved to do His Father’s will. Paul in prison did not feel triumphant but chose to rejoice in the Lord. The Psalms are filled with cries of abandonment and fear, yet they often conclude with a conscious decision to trust. This is not blind faith! This is faith with eyes wide open, anchored in truth, often in defiance of the emotional storm.
We see this same principle at work in everyday life. You would not hand your children over to a total stranger, but you might entrust them to a police officer whom you've never met before. Why? Because the uniform, the badge, the marked car, the calm authority in his voice, etc. are all indicators, pieces of evidence, that tell you that he belongs to a category of people other than “a complete stranger” and that you have reason to trust. Your confidence is not blind; it rests on identifiable cues that justify it. Faith in God is no different. It is not a leap into the dark, but a step toward what the mind has recognized as true. It calls us to rise above emotional turmoil and anchor ourselves in reality, not simply in what brings temporary relief.
This does not mean emotions or personal experiences are irrelevant. On the contrary, they often awaken in us the hunger for something deeper. They stir questions that reason must then answer. Surviving a crisis may spark a longing to know whether God is real. Walking with someone through despair may awaken a sense of purpose. These moments are powerful. Yet if we lean on them alone, our foundation will crack. Faith that is only “what got me through” is only as strong as the last crisis. Pain is not proof. Survival is not theology.
Consider someone who believes in fate because a string of coincidences saved them from disaster, or someone who believes that the child they lost to cancer became their guardian angel because the thought eases the grief. These beliefs may comfort, but comfort does not make them true. Faith that rests on emotional response alone will collapse when the feelings fade or the narrative shifts, because it is not grounded in God or His word or anything objective. It is grounded in you! Worse than that, it’s based on the squishiest, least reliable part of you.
To be clear, this is not a call to suppress emotion or to treat it as unworthy. On the contrary! Emotion has its place, but it must be grounded in truth, not in spite of it. When faith is grounded in what is real, it does not stifle feeling, it liberates it. A heart anchored in reason and evidence can feel much more deeply, not less. When you know that God is real and that His Word stands, your joy is not shallow, your peace is not fragile, and your grief does not undo you. You can weep without despair, trust without worry, hope without pretending and love without fear. Confidence in what is true does not silence the soul, it gives it wings!
C. S. Lewis captures this beautifully in Mere Christianity:
Lewis is right! Faith is not pretending your doubts do not exist, it is holding fast to what your reason has affirmed, even when your emotions rebel. That is not weakness, that is strength. That is not blind belief, it is wisdom!
So, what about your faith? Is it a reaction to pain or a response to truth? Is it built on what you have endured or on what you have examined and found trustworthy? Experiences may spark the journey, but they are not the destination. Faith stands only when it is built on the Rock, not on the shifting sands of struggle or emotional instinct.
Faith, at least the biblical kind of faith, might be born in suffering, but it is forged in truth. It is not merely a reflex in response to hardship or a balm for pain or some other sort of coping mechanism. It is a deliberate trust in what is real, even when emotions pull us elsewhere. We all know, deep down, that emotions make a shaky foundation. They shift with the wind, up one day and down the next, swayed by mood, memory, circumstance, and even the weather. No one builds a house on such shifty sand and expects it to stand.
Reason, on the other hand, offers solid ground. When it is rooted in evidence and sound logic, something objective, it becomes something that does not bend with our feelings or falter under life’s weight. Faith, rightly understood, is not about turning off one’s mind, ignoring evidence or clinging to contradictions. It is about looking carefully at what God has revealed, His creation, His promises, His character, His acts, concluding that they are trustworthy and then acting accordingly, whether our emotions are in sync or not.
Abraham did not prepare to sacrifice Isaac because he felt some sort of mystical prompting that he couldn’t understand or even articulate. On the contrary, he reasoned that God could raise the dead (Hebrews 11:19). His faith was not a leap into the dark, it was a step onto a foundation he had tested and found firm. That is not anti-reason, it is the fruit of reason, a trust born from rational confidence.
Biblical faith often runs against emotion. Jesus in Gethsemane did not feel like going to the cross but He resolved to do His Father’s will. Paul in prison did not feel triumphant but chose to rejoice in the Lord. The Psalms are filled with cries of abandonment and fear, yet they often conclude with a conscious decision to trust. This is not blind faith! This is faith with eyes wide open, anchored in truth, often in defiance of the emotional storm.
We see this same principle at work in everyday life. You would not hand your children over to a total stranger, but you might entrust them to a police officer whom you've never met before. Why? Because the uniform, the badge, the marked car, the calm authority in his voice, etc. are all indicators, pieces of evidence, that tell you that he belongs to a category of people other than “a complete stranger” and that you have reason to trust. Your confidence is not blind; it rests on identifiable cues that justify it. Faith in God is no different. It is not a leap into the dark, but a step toward what the mind has recognized as true. It calls us to rise above emotional turmoil and anchor ourselves in reality, not simply in what brings temporary relief.
This does not mean emotions or personal experiences are irrelevant. On the contrary, they often awaken in us the hunger for something deeper. They stir questions that reason must then answer. Surviving a crisis may spark a longing to know whether God is real. Walking with someone through despair may awaken a sense of purpose. These moments are powerful. Yet if we lean on them alone, our foundation will crack. Faith that is only “what got me through” is only as strong as the last crisis. Pain is not proof. Survival is not theology.
Consider someone who believes in fate because a string of coincidences saved them from disaster, or someone who believes that the child they lost to cancer became their guardian angel because the thought eases the grief. These beliefs may comfort, but comfort does not make them true. Faith that rests on emotional response alone will collapse when the feelings fade or the narrative shifts, because it is not grounded in God or His word or anything objective. It is grounded in you! Worse than that, it’s based on the squishiest, least reliable part of you.
To be clear, this is not a call to suppress emotion or to treat it as unworthy. On the contrary! Emotion has its place, but it must be grounded in truth, not in spite of it. When faith is grounded in what is real, it does not stifle feeling, it liberates it. A heart anchored in reason and evidence can feel much more deeply, not less. When you know that God is real and that His Word stands, your joy is not shallow, your peace is not fragile, and your grief does not undo you. You can weep without despair, trust without worry, hope without pretending and love without fear. Confidence in what is true does not silence the soul, it gives it wings!
C. S. Lewis captures this beautifully in Mere Christianity:
“Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off,’ you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently, one must train the habit of Faith.”
Lewis is right! Faith is not pretending your doubts do not exist, it is holding fast to what your reason has affirmed, even when your emotions rebel. That is not weakness, that is strength. That is not blind belief, it is wisdom!
So, what about your faith? Is it a reaction to pain or a response to truth? Is it built on what you have endured or on what you have examined and found trustworthy? Experiences may spark the journey, but they are not the destination. Faith stands only when it is built on the Rock, not on the shifting sands of struggle or emotional instinct.
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