When I got up this morning, the sun was shining. I was a bit surprised, because the forecast called for clouds and rain, but not entirely. In other words, it was not out of the realm of normal experience. After all, even if there are clouds, the sun is still "shining." The difference is that my view of it is blocked by the atmospheric cloud cover.
Now when I start a new day in general, do I "have faith" that the sun is going to rise, or do I "reason" based on prior experience that this will happen? What role does my belief in a creator and sustainer of the universe have to do with my faith or my reasoning that the sun will indeed rise?
A theme that continues to arise in our Pub Theology gatherings at Right Brain is the dialectic of faith and reason. How do they interact? Are both necessary? Can you live a meaningful life by focusing on one to the exclusion of the other? Are people who live by faith alone merely living in a fantasy? Are people who live by reason alone stuck in a shallow, materialistic existence?
Now certainly a materialist would say that we know by our reason that the sun will rise. This is based on prior experience that is both shared and confirmed by others. For such a person, faith is beside the point for this question. Of course the sun is going to rise -- it has for as long as anyone has been able to take note of it, and we have no foreseeable reason that it should stop in the near future. Faith is irrelevant.
For a person of faith, it's a bit more nuanced. I would agree with the above to a point. But the shortcoming of such a perspective is that it is rooted solely in the repeated, physical, confirmable act of the sun rising itself. It does not venture into such questions as, "Where did the sun come from?" Or "Why does our planet rotate on its axis as it orbits the sun -- thus providing our days and providing the energy needed for us to exist at all?" It also doesn't answer the question of why I should care if the sun rises or not.
For me, the experience of the sun rising is both a regular daily reality as well as an existential encouragement.
In other words, it regularly confirms for me that there is a being who upholds the very reality I live in.
The being is one who has created it in such a way as to allow me to experience and enjoy it -- knowing that the continual rotation and orbit of the planets is not just a meaningless going in circles, but a purposeful platform that makes history possible. That history is filled with meaning, and ultimately, a purpose.
So yes, perhaps faith might seem superfluous when talking about daily, testable realities of everyday existence, but it answers the question of meaning in a way that reason alone never can. So rather than pitting faith against reason, I hope, as many others before me, to integrate and live by both.
Bryan Berghoef is pastor of The Watershed Church and facilitator of a weekly Pub Theology group.
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