Thanks to a link posted by Arjun Muralidharan, I read an article on Newsvine about why faith is OK — as opposed to this article about why faith is not OK. Interesting discussion all around, but I have a shocking statement to make: faith, as defined by Mykola the atheist author of the above post, is indeed not OK. Neither is God. I honestly think that many atheists have some great points to make on these subjects.

I believe that the Christian Church in the West, by and large, is a failed institution on many levels. That doesn’t mean I’m against it — in fact I go to a church I just absolutely love — but the problem is that blind faith in a god we don’t know really is irrational. I’m not interested in faith if that faith isn’t grounded in something real, something that truly exists. I’m not interested in God if I’m unable to know if He’s real, if He loves me. Christians have abandoned their true missional calling, have not lived up to what they were supposed to be from the beginning: people who KNOW God and who live by God’s Love and by God’s Spirit.

Christians are supposed to be temples of the living God. We’re supposed to literally have access to God via the Holy Spirit. Jesus asked Father God to send the Holy Spirit to believers so that they could proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven with Power to all the ends of the earth. As James said in his letter, faith without works is dead. In other words, faith without action, faith without results, faith without signs and wonders, faith without miracles, faith without personal transformation, faith without dramatic upward societal change, is dead. Dead, useless, devoid of meaning, devoid of life. Dead.

You know, even though I asked Jesus into my life nearly twenty years ago at the age of five, I still feel like a newbie on this crazy bandwagon called being a disciple of Jesus. Yet I know enough to know that my faith is grounded in reality. I’ve felt God’s presence. I’ve experienced baptism of water and of fire via the Holy Spirit. I’ve seen visions, heard prophecies, and witnessed miracles of physical and spiritual healing. God is on the move, revival is coming; in fact, revival is already here; and we are soon about to witness the greatest outpouring of the Holy Spirit this planet has ever seen. It’s gonna be awesome.

In short, faith in whatever particular non-material thing someone happens to think sounds nice is truly useless. It’s a failure of being. But faith is a God who is real, who is personal, who loves us, who changes hearts and minds, who saves us from destruction through the born-again experience made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? That’s joy, that’s freedom, and it’s the only way to truly live.