Logic Versus Faith Testimony

A Thinker with Faith

One of the best ways to introduce my life and my pursuits is to discuss a test I took in my early thirties. It was a spiritual gifts test made up of two parts. Part one was for personality and it included four options. The second part had sixteen options related to spiritual giftings. Combined, these 4 personalities and 16 giftings could produce 64 different combinations. Before taking the test, the instructions mentioned that a thinker with the gift of faith was the rarest of those sixty-four possibilities.

It came as no surprise to me to be labeled as a thinker. I have taken other such tests and was labeled the beaver, thinker, mastermind, or whatever represented that category. This certainly does describe me as I am always wondering how and why and trying to make patterns out of events.

What did surprise me was being told my strongest gift was faith. Perhaps it should not have, as at that point in life I was already trying to follow what I received in prayer ... but to myself, it always felt like my faith was weaker than it should be and that my logic was always fighting my faith.

After receiving these descriptions, I began examining my life from a different perspective and realized that these two forces had always been there. Either one or the other would be taking the lead for a period of time. For the first twenty-five years of my life I would say logic won the vast majority of the time. Then, for the next twenty-five years of my life faith became more prominent ... but not by much. It was a struggle between the flesh and the spirit. There was a desire to have that simple faithfulness of a child yet the yearning to understand everything before obeying even simple commands.

My years of doing photography, almost to the point of obsession, were driven by the desire to learn and experience what life was about, especially during the first half of my twenties. The later half was when I was becoming more faithful, and my photography took on a more symbolic and abstract appearance as I began exploring deeper themes that could not be recorded directly. Yet, somehow, photography was still my artistic tool in this battle between logic and faith.

Still later, even my work in the field of Creation Science bore this battle out. I did not want to try and prove what I was supposed to have faith in, but while battling to defend the Genesis account of creation, there was certainly many personal questions being taken care of after having been raised in a secular society and having been taught evolution. The drive was as personal as it was trying to do something for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Through the years, this battle has calmed down a little. Traveling back and forth across the United States while doing creation research put me in many positions where faith was needed. Although I have occasionally had to wait longer than expected, I have not been disappointed. While I still have a desire to know things, I have come to realize that knowledge is of the urgent and sometimes of the prideful while faith is of the important and often humble.

After fifty years of this battle, one benefit I now have that not many seem to find is that both my faith and logic point in the same direction. I have a Creator. I have a Savior. Righteousness is the measure of all things physical and spiritual. I want to resist evil and restore what the enemy has stolen. It would be difficult to not have these concepts because both faith in the spiritual and understanding of the physical point to those same conclusions.

Believers sometimes wonder how the Israelites could doubt and complain when they entered the wilderness after witnessing the miracles that brought them out of Egypt. I think I would fare no better than they. After decades, the battle between faith and logic continues on for me. In an odd way, each time a person wants to grow or reach for a higher level, it requires more faith than they currently have. It is a never-ending battle of spirit and flesh ... or at least so it seems for me. Traveling the wilderness takes a different faith than leaving Egypt.

The first part of this book is filled with my background, childhood, and young adulthood. Therefore it expresses a lot of searching, logic, and philosophy. The next part of the book starts dealing with faith and the many adventures that narrow little path has taken me through. Perhaps, before my story finishes, I will learn to balance logic and faith and let them work together as a strong team.

Becoming a Believer

As I continued my attempts to study life, I finally turned toward the Scriptures, beginning with the book of Ecclesiastes, and began searching in the spiritual direction. I did not know it at the time, but though I was raised in the Christian church, I knew very little about what the Scriptures had to say about life. I was soon to realize that what I knew about life was a man-made perspective that tried to explain our planet and our lives devoid of a spiritual realm and the One Most High.

In reading the Scriptures, I was faced with several major decisions. Was I truly to believe that they are inspired and that the Almighty really exists? Was I to follow the instructions given in Scripture or live life according to the religious traditions created by man? Was there a spiritual realm that exists alongside of the physical realm? Am I able to have a relationship with the One Most High? Did I genuinely understand and believe that salvation and eternal life come only through the Messiah? These questions and many others needed to be answered. I called myself a believer, but my life and my actions did not show it.

The greatest change in my life came when I decided to start praying. The initial attempt was to pray fifteen minutes each morning for three months and see what would happen. The first morning I got up, prayed for a whole two minutes and then did not know what to do for the remaining time. Though I had grown up going to church each week, I had not learned to pray. I soon received some excellent advice that said I should pray to the Almighty like I would talk to my spouse (sharing good things, bad things, desires, fears, etc.). I tried this, especially letting our Heavenly Father know of my fears and concerns for the day. I was able to fill up fifteen minutes. By the end of the three months, the result was that the things prayed about generally went better than what I had been accustomed to in the first 30 years of my life.

When Did I Become a Man?

I was already in my thirties when the walk began. I decided to learn to pray because I had the concept the if we will follow, He will lead. I wanted to learn to follow. That process ended almost two years later. I had said I was not returning to my job at the country club. I had been asked to come for a meeting with the president and my supervisor. They made a good offer as far as logic goes. I now had to make the decision. Do I go with the physical where I work for physical which offered regular income or do I follow my faith and see where the Eternal takes me and how He will provide. This is when i stopped reacting to the world around me and choose the path I was going to follow though I knew not where it would lead.

I made the choice to follow my faith. I am so glad I did. The journey that has followed in the last 20 years has been absolutely amazing. He has let me learn about His creation. And I know that as a new season in my life begins, the next few decades of life will be even more amazing. It will be helping people, not just physically, but learning about the spiritual as well .. and that will be even more amazing.

Many people would choose an age like turning 21 or an event like graduating from High school. I could choose other events like completing my first solo exhibition as an artist ... but these all pale in comparison to a single decision that changed the course of my life.

This page is under construction. My apologies for any misspellings, repeated text, missing references, etc. Please visit again later for a more complete treatment of this topic.