Reconstructing

Re-evaluating
Jonathan Pierre
I’ve found a growing sense of unrest
recently with believing things to be true
merely because they’ve been handed to
me as such. This isn’t the way anyone
should accept things to be true in
faith, in the same way that answering
“It’s always been done this way” is an
insufficient response to “Why are things
done like this?” in business. As someone
who grew up in the church, I’m realizing
how many surface-level truths I’ve
been conditioned to accept with little
scrutiny. Questions like “Why did Jesus
have to die for our sins? Couldn’t God
have just changed the rules?” and “Why
are we born sinners? Isn’t that unfair?”
have laid in my blindspots, underneath
assumptions that I didn’t deliberately
take up.
I believe that Jesus is the way, the truth,
and the life. I’m realizing, though, that
just knowing the end destination doesn’t
satisfy me. I desire to know all the lines
of reasoning that point to Jesus as Lord.
I want to know for myself why what I
believe is true. As an analogy, I don’t
want to just know the street address but
the directions for how to get there. I
want to ‘reconstruct’ my faith from the
ground up.
I have vivid memories of laying on the
floor of my sophomore dorm room,
frustrated by the logic of faith and
overwhelmed by questions that felt too
much to contain. I felt a disconnect
between the zealous high schooler I
was when I first came to faith and the
person I had become—a college student
drowning in an entropic web of doubt,
afraid of what I might find if I dared to
ask the questions.
IF I BELIEVE THAT JESUS
IS LORD, I SHOULDN’T
BE AFRAID TO PEER
BEHIND THE CURTAIN.
I’ve since learned that there’s merit in
doing this kind of investigating of my
faith. If I believe that Jesus is Lord, I
shouldn’t be afraid to peer behind the
curtain. If I want to live a life of long
devotion to God, at some point along the
way, I’m going to be faced with doubts
that force me to critically examine what
I believe.
The risk I find in building my faith
on a foundation of merely subjective
experience is that when I face the suffering
that every Christian is promised to face
(2 Timothy 3:12, ESV) and the doubts
come rushing in, my faith is prone to
come tumbling down like Jenga blocks.
When things get tough in life, I’m going
to need a tried and tested, objective truth
to lean on. One that posits that God is
real, good, and faithful.
I’m inspired by the story of the Berean
Jews in Acts who, in receiving the
message of the Gospel, “examined the
scriptures daily to see if these things were
so” and then “therefore believed” (Acts
17:11-12, ESV). They took the message
that they were handed and worked
out their faith with reason, in order to
establish for themselves the truth of what
they heard.
BEING HERE IS AN
OPPORTUNITY
TO
DEFINE,
SCRUTINIZE
AND SHARPEN OUR
BELIEFS.
For those who have committed to
following Jesus, building this foundation
of reason for why we believe what we
believe equips us to better defend our
faith. As Jesus’s disciple Peter instructs
in 1 Peter 3:15: “always [be] prepared to
make a defense to anyone who asks you
for a reason for the hope that is in you”
(ESV). What Peter doesn’t say is that
it’s tough to defend something that we
haven’t thoroughly defined for ourselves
yet. At the same time, questions we get
that we don’t know the answers to reveal
our blindspots. This is why I feel a sense
of urgency to do this “reconstructing”
while I’m still at Yale. Never again will I
be surrounded by this many intellectuals,
both Christians and non-Christians alike.
Being here is an opportunity to define,
scrutinize and sharpen our beliefs.
I’m confident that intellectually engaging
with our faith like this honors God. This
semester, I’ve found myself meditating
on the part of Hebrews 11:6 that says
that God “rewards those who seek Him”
Reconstructing: Fall 2022