1 post tagged “2 corinthians 1”
This morning I was wrestling through the (admittedly strange) question - "What is the real difference between agnosticism and the Christian faith?"
The typical first 'obvious' response to this question would be that the agnostic declares he does not or can not know or believe that God exists because of a lack of sufficient evidence, whereas the Christian declares that he does believe in God's existence.
My response to an agnostic would be that his world view is also a form of faith - namely a faith in his mind to be able to decide that there is not enough evidence. Put differently: the agnostic trusts and puts his faith in his own mind telling him the evidence is not enough to trust in a God.
But here is where I started to wrestle through something: how different is that from someone who decides there IS enough evidence to trust in a God. Aren't both in the end trusting in their own minds to weigh the evidence to decide who or what to trust in? If not, why not?
I didn't really come to a conclusion until a bit later when I was reading in 2 Corinthians and I came across the following passage:
For our reason for confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that with pure motives and sincerity which are from God – not by human wisdom but by the grace of God – we conducted ourselves in the world, and all the more toward you.
- 2 Corinthians 1:12
Here's what hit me: Our minds can not be trusted unless we have pure motives and sincerity. According to the Christian world view, nobody has pure motives and sincerity, but rather these are given by God's grace, as Paul emphasizes here. This exposes a fundamental difference between the heart attitudes of an agnostic and a Christian.
A Christian is not an agnostic who has received enough evidence to finally make the step of faith. Rather, what we are called to do is to have a heart that honestly says something along the lines of "God (if you exist), grant me pure motives in seeking you, because I need them." An agnostic praying this prayer with a soft heart to an "Unknown God" (see Acts 17), is truly "not far from the Kingdom of God" if you ask me.
The major problem is that this attitude is not an easy one to have, because it hits at the heart of Adamic pride, i.e. the desire to be our own God, to declare ourselves innocent and our motives pure.
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