Is belief in God reasonable?

Welcome to Theology Thursday! Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him; it is "faith seeking understanding." I hope these newsletters help enhance your faith and deepen your love for God and his people, the church.

Today's question:
Is belief in God reasonable?

Pastor Brady's thoughts:
After calculating the improbability of life arising by chance, atheist astronomer Fred Hoyle described the odds as “A tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747.”  

Some of what Christians believe is hard to accept. Some of the claims of the Bible seem very bizarre. Faith comes easy for some of us, but for many it is a lifelong struggle to trust the truth and grace of God presented to us in scripture. 

If that’s you, I’d like you to consider Pascal’s Wager. Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician and physicist in the 1600s who came to Christ and made public arguments for the existence of God, including his famous “wager.” 

It goes like this. Pascal suggested that when we have uncertainty about God’s existence, we ought still choose belief because it is the better logical choice. Here’s the calculation: 

• If you believe in God and God exists, you gain infinite reward (eternal happiness).
• If you believe and God doesn’t exist, you lose very little (some time, some pleasures).
• If you don’t believe and God exists, you risk infinite loss (eternal damnation).
• If you don’t believe and God doesn’t exist, you gain only limited, finite benefits (some time, some short-term pleasures).

In other words, if you believe and God is not real, the loss is comparatively small. But if you choose not to believe and God is real, the loss is profound. So, even if you think the chance that God exists is small, the potential payoff (infinite gain vs. infinite loss) makes belief the “rational” wager.

This may feel overly calculated, even transactional in a faith-damaging way. We don’t want to choose God because of what we get out of it but because of who he is. Yet, Pascal’s Wager forces us to recognize that our lives are already invested in something. We are already wagering our time, trust, and allegiances to what we believe to be true. Pascal is simply asking us to consider whether giving that time, trust, and allegiance to God might not only be meaningful, but reasonable. 

Like any good Christian, Pascal is not trying to beat skeptics over the head with the truth. Rather, he wants them to see that belief in the God of the Bible is not an outlandish leap of blind faith. Scripture, in a number of places, takes a similar approach. “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” Psalm 34:8 says. “Certainty” is not the goal of faith. Faith requires trust. We cannot be 100% certain. 90% will do. Maybe even 51%. Your salvation is not based on the strength of your faith but the object of your faith - Jesus Christ.  

Faith, in this sense, can begin as a posture rather than a conclusion. It may look like praying honestly, even with doubt. It may mean living as though Christ’s teachings are true - choosing forgiveness, seeking mercy, practicing love - and watching what grows from that soil.

Pascal’s insight is not that faith is a gamble in the reckless sense, but that it is a step taken with thoughtful hope. When the stakes are eternal and the invitation is open, trusting God is not a wild guess - it is a courageous and considered beginning.

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. - Hebrews 11:3

I invite you to watch this video from Gavin Ortlund: Pascal’s Wager is the Answer You’re Looking For.

TO KNOW GOD AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN!
- Pastor Brady

Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to office@minierchristian.org and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.