Trust is a tricky thing. One psychologist has called trust the “juxtaposition of people’s loftiest hopes and aspirations with their deepest worries and fears.” It’s a risk/reward proposition; it’s saying “I’m trusting you to do —BLANK— in order to achieve —BLANK—.” If the first doesn’t come through, the second won’t happen.
For Christians, that formula equates to “I’m trusting God to forgive me of my sins so that I can go to Heaven.” Proverbs 16:3 says plainly, “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your plans,” but what were to happen if God didn’t follow through on His end of the bargain? What if Jesus’ sacrifice meant absolutely nothing, and we spent our lives in pursuit of a goal that didn’t actually exist? According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:19, we would be of all men “most pitiable.”
So can we trust the Bible? I don’t mean trust that it’s been copied correctly (which it has), or that we have the right books in our canon (which we do) or that the facts are historically accurate (they are). I mean can we trust the Bible to do what it says it will do? This takes the argument away from being a purely theological question and more towards a psychological issue.
There’s a lot at stake in answering this question. In John 20:31, John writes that the miracles of Jesus are written “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” Our belief is based on facts; the facts substantiate our belief.
But facts aren’t the only thing that’s important. Historical accuracy does not equal Scriptural conversion. Reading the Bible will not save you; obeying the Bible will. How do I know this? Because the Bible didn’t die on the cross for your sins, Jesus did, and the Bible is meant to point us towards Him (John 5:31-44).
After the raising of Lazarus, the Pharisees circled amongst themselves and began to confer on how they would disparage Jesus, because as they put it, “If He keeps going on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation” (John 11:47-48). In other words, they knew that what He was doing was of God (John 3:2), but their bigger concern was their position of power. Even though they were “masters” of Old Testament law, they missed the central tenet of it, which was to point towards the true Messiah.
So facts, even though they’re important, don’t always necessitate scriptural conversion. We can trust that the Bible is true without trusting that it will get us to Heaven. That takes faith, and not everyone has/wants that.
When we start looking at the Bible through this lens, a whole bunch of new questions start to creep up, such as…
Is the God of the Bible Trustworthy?
By His own standard of testing which prophets were true or not (Deuteronomy 18:20-22), if what God said would happen didn’t happen, then He is not to be trusted. Let’s go to the videotape then, shall we?
There are nearly 2,000 prophecies made AND fulfilled in the Bible alone. The chances of such an event happening are one in 10^2000. Or, to put it in ways that us non-math people can understand, it would take 200 billion earths, each populated by four billion people, to find just one person that fulfilled even 100 of those prophecies. Much less 2,000. See how impossible that is?
God understands how important trust is; just read Psalm 41:4-9 and see it’s usage in John 13:18 to describe the relationship between Jesus and Judas to understand that. That’s why, even though He has never lied, God still promises us Heaven twice. In Hebrews 6:9-12, the writer encourages us to keep pushing forward in our faith and not fall victim to the belief that God has started to ignore us. We can be sure of His promises based on the example of Abraham (Hebrews 6:13-20). God kept His promises to Him, so we know that God will keep His promises to us as well.
Is the God of the Bible Worth Following?
Richard Dawkins, a particularly aggressive atheist, has this to say concerning almighty God: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
That’s a lot of big words when really he could’ve just used the last one: bully.
That’s what a lot of people see God as – not just as an angry God, but an angry God who hates people and wants to watch us burn for His own pleasure.
Dawkins bases his understanding of God on passages like Deuteronomy 7:1-5 which discuss the annihilation of the Canaanite people. Of course, in saying that, he conveniently misses the wickedness of the nation in Deuteronomy 9:5 and in passages like Genesis 18:23-32. These are not “innocent victims,” as much as Dawkins would like to suggest. These are evil people who burn infants to death as a form of sacrifice to their God.
Our generation isn’t much better. Indeed, one of the biggest mistakes Dawkins and those like him make is to overestimate the wrath of God and underestimate the sinfulness of this world. We live in a time where 200,000 babies are aborted every single day. When we talk about the supposed “immorality” of God, we conveniently forget our own.
Never mind the fact that the destruction of a nation doesn’t necessarily mean their entire condemnation as well. Ezekiel 14:12-23 points out very well that even if really holy men were in a nation that was wiped out, their righteousness wouldn’t be able to save the empire, but they themselves would be saved spiritually. Consequently, not everyone who happens to get caught up in the destruction of a nation is worthy of hellfire.
Or, at least for the sake of what could happen to the United States, I hope not.
Is God Even Able to Deliver on His Promises in the Bible?
I love Peter. Most of us feel like we’re more akin to to him than anyone else, simply because he’s so impulsive. Yet in Mark 10, he asks Jesus a question that any one of us, if we were honest with ourselves, would probably ask as well: “We have left everything to follow you. What will there be for us?” Jesus responds by promising 100 fold more in this life, and also, once this life is over, an eternal home.
Those are big promises. What makes us think He’ll be able to deliver on them?
We know of the other promises that God makes, such as peace (Isaiah 26:1-4), joy (Psalm 126:5), and wisdom (James 1:5). But we don’t always feel them, do we? Because of that, we’re unsure if He’ll be able to deliver us home as well.
God has promises us those things, but just because we feel pain, heartache, and sadness at times doesn’t mean He’s broken His promises to us. Betrayal denotes a breach of terms, and God is very clear about the pain that we’ll experience (John 16:33).
He’s also very clear about the hope that we have through the pain (Romans 5:1-5). And the fact that He will be with us every step of the way (Matthew 28:20).
So no, God hasn’t broken His promises to us, which means we know He won’t break His promises to us about Heaven either. God has proven Himself trustworthy over and over again in the Bible, so the question isn’t “Can we trust the Bible?” but “Do we trust the Bible?”
Well…
Do you?
