One of the accusations that religion in general and Christianity specifically receives is that it is anti-reason. Faith is seen as a neglect of one’s mental faculties in pursuit of pies in the sky. Unfortunately,  certain actions from church leaders and believers alike have not helped the case for Christianity, for example, the Shakahola tragedy. However, despite all these, the Christian faith is the most reasonable among the various religions. So much so that the apostle Peter says in our text today that we must always be ready to defend our faith by providing a reason for why we have hope. Ours is a sensible faith.

This thought is important because sometimes we have assumed that to have faith is to be foolish. In fact, we have coined the phrase that’s not necessarily Biblical, “The line between faith and foolishness is very thin.” Yet, the witness of Scripture is that the

lacking faith is what is foolishness, “A fool says in his heart there is no God.” (Psalm 14:1). What we must quickly address at this juncture is that what Christianity is accused of is a lack of empirical evidence. The challenge with that attack is that we don’t test the reasonableness of everything with empirical evidence. I may not prove in a laboratory that God truly exists, but there is enough evidence for me to believe. In fact, the 19th century English preacher, Charles Spurgeon, once said: “There are two things that prove to me that God exists – answered prayers and transformed lives.” What a joy to know that we do not become unreasonable when we believe but rather become even more reasonable. The Bible calls us not to remove our minds as Christians but to renew them instead.

1. In your opinion, does Christianity make sense?

2. What reason(s) would you give in defence to the Christian faith?