A leap of faith

Do you remember the scene in the movie, “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade,” where Indy is faced with the seemly impossible task of crossing a wide and deep chasm to reach the hiding place of the “Holy Grail?” Indy had reached the point of no return and must step into oblivion to save his father and retrieve the cup that Christ supposedly drank from at the “Last Supper.” After a moment’s hesitation he steps into space and walks across the abyss on a bridge that had been there all time, but obscured by the optical illusion of the bridge looking exactly like the material of the rock walls of the chasm. Indy takes a “step of faith” and is rewarded by reaching his goal.

Indiana Jones takes a "leap of faith"

According to this scene, and enforced by general opinion, religious faith and human reason are opposites. Indiana Jones simply could not understand how it was possible to reach the Grail without any visible means to do so; the implication is that his decision to step out was a forfeiture of his intellect. This idea that Christian faith is a surrender of our reasoning abilities is a common one in our culture. 

For many Christians, that scene is a vaguely disturbing one. On the one hand, it is a moment of triumph. It seems to lend credence to the importance of religious faith. Then again, it portrays faith as being a mindless exercise. Indiana Jones is an intellectual, rational college professor who is interested in the Grail primarily as an historical artifact. His leap of faith goes against everything he stands for.

This reveals a tension that has existed in the church for centuries. Is faith in Christ a surrender of the intellect? Is godly wisdom in complete opposition to what Scripture calls “worldly wisdom”? There are many that question whether the Christian should even expose himself to teaching that is not consistent with the Word of God. 

For example, it is a frightening prospect for many Christian parents to consider sending their children to a secular college where the Christian faith is often ridiculed or condemned. Still others want their children to be challenged by a secular education. They consider it part of the Christian’s missionary mandate to confront secular culture with their very presence. In their mind, the tendency of Christians to separate themselves from secular environments leads to an isolationist mentality that fails to reach the lost for Christ. 

In the movie Indy had to make a literal leap of faith. When he stepped into the “void” in order to reach the Grail, he was unable to see the pathway to the Grail, but his “blind faith” was rewarded when it turned out that the pathway was hidden by the optical illusion. He did what most people would consider suicidal. But is this a true picture of religious faith?

Consider for a moment the sermons that you have heard on faith: what examples of “faith” are used as illustrations? Our “faith” in flying in an aircraft without seeing the pilot? Or maybe our “faith” in trusting banks to keep our money safe? Or even our faith in electricity flowing at the touch of a switch? That’s not faith! That’s trust, an entirely different colored animal altogether.

When Peter got out of the boat and walked on the surface of the lake, he did something that was ultimately beyond human reason. He was a fisherman, he knew the properties of water, had probably even seen friends drown in the stuff. When Abraham left all the “comforts’ of home and set out for a destination unknown, you can “bet your bottom dollar” that many of his friends thought he was a few sand dunes short of a beach. 

The very nature of faith demands that we go from belief in the tangible to seeing with entirely different vision. Helen Keller (who became blind as the result of a childhood fever, then went deaf) was once asked if she would like to get her vision back. She said no, because then she would have to believe what she saw!

Faith is imagination in action; it’s the guarantee that when we step off the cliff, God has already built the bridge! Faith is human reason with divine wings. Its impossibility dressed in work clothes.  We can “believe” a fallible human when they promise to do something for us, but usually we struggle accepting the infallible promises of the Creator. Faith is a challenge, were it not so it would simply be an exercise in the ordinary.

We don’t have to surrender our reasoning facilities; we just have to bring them into line with the greatest reasoning power in the universe. We upgrade from Reasoning Version 1.01 to Version Infinite!    

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