West Main

THE PROOFS WE OFFER

It was on a tired Friday afternoon that I attended a lecture at Scripps Oceanographic Institute. The speaker was an old scientist from the world of hydrodynamics whose topic was the scientific method and how theories could be verified as true. The year was 1960. As a graduate student, I had been exposed to enough theories and derived laws to prompt my interest in what the old water-warrior had to say.

He drew a vertical line on the blackboard and labeled the space left of the line as the world of sense – where observations could be made about real happenings in the material world. The space to the right of the line he labeled as the world of abstract thought, where theories are born to propose likely laws that explained the observations.

But the proof of theories, he said, was to apply them repeatedly back into the material world in new and different areas to see if they were generally true. This cycle of going back and forth across his line was then the basis of the validation he proposed. The old gentleman’s clear reasoning held my attention and I was glad that I had taken the time to hear him out.

Because I had been convinced as a youth to believe in Christ, a natural question came to mind during the lecture. What about the ideas in Christianity that I had come to believe; what proof did I have to offer that they were true? The good news of Christ had not been taught to me as based on experimental discovery, but as announcements of truth. How could proclamations or announcements qualify as truth per se?

My thoughts then returned to our lecturer’s blackboard drawing and his cycle from the world of ideas back into the world of observable facts. This kind of proof was available to Christians too! The teachings of Jesus could also be put to the test repeatedly in a world where people lived.

Such a test needs to be two-fold. Did Jesus identify real and basic human problems, or did he deal with often emphasized peripheral matters? Also, were his solutions unique in their ability to solve the real pitfalls of man, or were they merely band-aids?

Chapters 5-8 of Matthew’s life of Christ offer a concentrated sample of Jesus’ identification of problems and prescriptions for the ills of the human race. He began with the “beatitudes,” dealing with how we are to view ourselves and others around us. Therein lays the roots of most of our problems. What follows in these chapters is an identification of cures for marriage disruption, animosity, love of money, and other big problems that have always had a foothold in our fallen world. The truths he announced fit our needs like Cinderella’s slipper.

Not only what Jesus said, but what he did, has the ring of truth. He dealt with guilt, and our inability to right past wrongs in our lives. He personified the justice of a holy God by assuming our guilt on the cross. In this, he solved a problem that all of the philosophers of the world could not help us with. These are the proofs Christians have to offer to a doubting world.

– James Gibbs