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Two troublesome hurdles confront Christians when they try to engage others in their communities for the cause of Christ. Those obstacles are the words truth and faith. My warning doesn’t concern our task of persuading people of the truth about God, Jesus, and Christianity. That detail is critical but is not my focus here. My caution also doesn’t concern our mission to encourage others to put their faith in Jesus. That, of course, is equally vital.
Here is my concern. When we use the words truth and faith in conversations with non-Christian friends and family nowadays, I’m convinced that they frequently hear something entirely different from what we have in mind. Those words do not mean the same thing to nonbelievers as they do to us. Consequently, unbelievers simply do not understand our message—at least, not the way that we’re trying to communicate it.
Take the word truth, for example. Classically, that word was just a synonym for the word fact. If a statement was true—whether in science or history or ethics or religion—then it was a fact. It was an accurate description of the way the world was. Simple. Not so simple anymore, though. That little word has gone through an overhaul in recent times. When Jesus said, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17), or when Paul referred to the “truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:5), or when Luke wrote to Theophilus so that he would know “the exact truth” (Luke 1:4, NASB), they were talking about facts. Indeed, that’s what virtually everyone means when they use the word—except when talking about religion or morality. Then truth changes into something completely different.
Beware when any possessive pronouns are used to modify the word—as in “your truth” or “my truth” or “their truth.” That simple adjustment radically changes the word’s meaning. Ever since people became convinced that no one could really know objective truth in the areas of religion and morality, truth got relativized. It morphed from being a synonym for fact into being a synonym for belief. Facts are facts. Beliefs, though, are either true or false, which is why calling a “belief” a “truth” is not only confusing; it’s odd. If a person’s belief isn’t accurate, then it’s incorrect, mistaken, misguided, or just plain wrong, but it certainly isn’t a truth. Nevertheless, the muddle persists.
A virtue of this move, some think, is that it engenders an amicable tolerance. Since everyone’s spiritual beliefs are equally true “for them” (i.e., they believe them), there’s no point in fussing about religious differences. Everyone is equally welcome to his own spiritual fantasy. The consequence, though, is that followers of Christ are culturally pressured to concede that their own biblical views are no more sound, true, or factual than anyone else’s—and many professing Christians unfortunately follow that lead.
Here’s what I suggest. First, instead of talking about your “faith” or your “beliefs”—words that can easily be relativized and misunderstood as “your truth”—talk about your convictions, those things that you’ve become convinced of. Second, continually clarify that you’re not talking about your religious wishful thinking or your make-believe-to-make-me-feel-happy kind of story.
Our story doesn’t start out “Once upon a time” for a reason: it doesn’t intend to be understood as a fairy tale or a myth. Be clear with your friend that you’re not offering fanciful fiction but measurable history. The things that our story describes really happened. Even if he disagrees with your claim, at least he’ll know what kind of claim you’re making. Help him see that Christianity professes to be true in the deep sense—true in the way that gravity is true—and if it isn’t true in that sense, then it offers nothing useful to anyone at all.
So religious truth has been relativized, reduced to mere belief taken simply “on faith.” That’s the other troublesome word that’s undergone a radical overhaul: faith. A hundred years ago, no one thought of religious faith as a blind, irrational leap. Nowadays, the impulse is to consider reason and faith as opposites. That’s why the average atheist now defines faith as “belief without good evidence,” or even “belief in the teeth of good evidence to the contrary.” Some Christians have unfortunately abetted this confusion. “If you have all this evidence,” they quip, “then where is room for faith?” Notice the subtle calculus. More evidence, less faith. Less evidence, more faith. To such Christians, apologetics—giving evidence or offering reasons in defense of faith—would actually be detrimental to faith. This is not the biblical view, though.
The Greek word for “faith,” pistis, means “active trust.” The biblical record is replete with appeals to take a step of confident trust, not a leap of faith, based on good reasons—trustworthy testimony (Acts 2:32), rational reflection (17:24–29), and “many convincing proofs” (1:3, NASB). Addressing this confusion can be tricky. With Christians, you can point to the texts and hope that they’ll see the light. Determined skeptics, however, may continue to insist on their distorted definition. No matter. When they insist that faith is belief without evidence, simply say: “I guess I don’t have ‘faith,’ then. I have trust based on reasons. I’m convinced of certain things about Jesus because of good evidence. Therefore, I’ve put my trust in Him.”
Don’t get hung up on “faith” words because you find them in your English Bibles. They’re only translations. When an English word no longer captures the sense of the biblical Greek word, choosing a substitute is a smart adjustment. Knowing God accurately so that we can be fruitful witnesses in the world means, in part, using God’s words in the way that God uses them instead of the distorted way that the world often does. Truth and faith are so deeply misunderstood in our culture—and even in the church—that the confusion becomes a serious obstacle to communicating what the truth is and what we mean when we say that others should put their faith in Christ.
Once you understand the confusion and address it, the gospel seed you scatter is less likely to be snatched away by the devil. Instead, “the one who hears the word and understands it . . . bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty” (Matt. 13:23).