Let’s start with an aside. I canceled all television channels almost two years ago and it’s been one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made. Have you heard someone say, or said yourself, “How come we have 200 channels and nothing good is every on?” Not being frequently exposed to television one realizes how true that is. And when one does see it, it’s even more noticeable just how bad it is.

I was again reminded of this last weekend when at our in-laws house I had to endure the torture called Wife Swap. It’s a show that swaps the wives of two very different families and makes them live in the other’s world. Usually they pick the most extreme (and usually ridiculous) opposites to pair up.

This time the show paired together a conservative, small-town, Christian, black family and a liberal, white, atheistic, white family. Though in my unfortunately multiple experiences with the show I’ve come to expect that neither family is one I’d want to emulate, but as is usually the case (with almost all mass media) the Christian family is made to look extremely ridiculous.

In the show the atheist wife goes to a Bible study with her new family. In the opening moments one of the young boys stutters through the beginnings of a question, “How did God um, um, um…” For which he is promptly cut off with a, “Sit down and stop asking stupid questions!” remark. The treatment of the visiting wife is similar judging from her exit interview where she says she received multiple “just believe” non-answers to her questions.


[On the other side of the swap, the atheist father makes a very simple yet important observation, one which I wish many Christians would consider. He said to his new wife that she can't answer him with, "Well, the Bible says," when he doesn't accept the Bible as an authority.]

Now, as hard as many of these shows try to paint Christians as unthinking sheeple, blindly following the herd, I do think at least a part of the assertion has some merit. And on this note I also wish Christians would take heed.

Critics often accuse Christians of Mark Twain’s notion of faith as “believing something you know ain’t so;” rationally vacant and blind adhesion to some archaic book. I think some Christians have unfortunately adopted this notion of blind faith as their own as well.
Just believe!

Never mind that the Bible doesn’t talk about faith in such ways. Jesus often used miracles as evidence to support his claim to be divine. He never said, “Take my word for it.” Even Thomas, a man that should have had enough evidence to already know Jesus as reliable, was not denied access when he wished to touch Jesus’ wounds after his resurrection.

While I don’t feel confident enough to adequately detail the biblical definition of faith in a few short paragraphs here, it’s clear what definition the text doesn’t support: fideism. It’s really important to use biblical terms in biblical ways.

We often misuse faith in the same way we misuse other words like God’s will or love. Faith is no more “thoughts about God” than love is “feelings about God.” In the Christian community we hear frequent confessions of people that “love” God yet have little in their life to demonstrate that. True love of God yields visible fruit. 2 John 1:6 says, “And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.” In similar fashion, faith is more than a public profession of belief. Jesus, John and Paul explicitly and repeatedly speak against those that claim to serve God with their mouths yet scorn him with their actions as liars.