What is Faith?

“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.”  James 2:19

There is an idea today that God will not prove his existence so we can exercise our Free Will and have Faith. In Dennis Prager’s exposition on the book of Numbers, he points out that the Israelites experienced the real presence of God every day for forty years, in the form of the Cloud and the Column of Fire, and in the Manna they got six days per week.  And this was after he brought the ten plagues on Egypt and led them through the Red Sea to free them from slavery.  And yet, time and time again, the Israelites rebelled against God.  They KNEW for a fact that God was real and it did not stop them from sinning.

Every single one of them, from Korah and his followers who rose up against Moses, to the men that scouted the Promised Land, to Aaron and Miriam and even Moses himself - every single one of them sinned against God.  They saw and heard God at Mount Sinai.  And he brought forth water from a rock (twice), and gave them quail when they complained about the lack of variety.  He sent the poisonous serpents among them because of their rebellion, and then had Moses set up the serpent on the pole, so all they had to do was look to it to be saved. 

You might say that, while they had the benefit of seeing and experiencing God, they did not have a personal copy of the Bible to refer to, and they did not have generations of ancestors to follow after.  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had lived four hundred years before, and in between, it seems that God was absent from their lives.  Moses, in the beginning of Exodus, has to reintroduce his countrymen to God.  And when Moses went up on Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, the people made a golden calf because that’s what they had learned about Religion from living in Egypt: you worship your God by making an image of him and then having an orgy (yep, that’s what they did in Exodus 32:6).  So they had as much to unlearn as they had to learn about worshipping God.  Even Moses sinned against God, disobeying him and taking credit for bringing water from the rock the second time.  

In my own journey of faith, I have become 100% convinced of the Truth of the existence of God.  This is not something I hope is true or believe to be true.  CS Lewis arrived at a similar point.  He said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”  But like the Israelites, my conviction does not prevent me from being convicted of committing sins against God and my neighbors.  

When I go into New York, the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty in this country is vivid.  How can I walk past them and not help?  How do I?  “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead (James 2:15-17).”

2025 Faith and Reason Conference