Does God expect us to have blind faith?
Read Dave’s answer
Answer 1
Yes and no.
Yes, He wants us to trust Him and His greater wisdom and knowledge. Even in the face of apparent contradictions - which are inevitable in the human pursuit of truth, whether religious, scientific, or philosophical.
No, He does not expect us to abandon reason, logic, and truth in our pursuit of a pure knowledge of God. The scriptures tell us that God is LOVE, so when we encounter fact and logic that seem odd or in conflict with that fundamental premise, what we should do is to engage in critical thinking to better understand where we might be wrong in our attempts to reconcile our understanding of things to God’s TRUTH.
Since faith is hope in things that are not seen but which are true, true faith is always “blind,” since it involves (by definition) the unseen / unknowable according to the relative certainty of sight and sense.
If we have “blind faith” in nonsense - e.g. a flying spaghetti monster - then that is an abusive use of the term “faith,” since the object of the so-called “blind faith” is not only unseen but also not true. That means that the word “faith” as it is defined and used in scripture cannot be used in that context, even if those who lack faith try to (mis)use the word to impugn believers.
The fact is that anyone who truly understands faith understands that it is grounded in truth, and belief in something that is not true or self-evidently false is “blind and vain belief” rather than “faith.” In other words, “blind faith” is a redundancy, and when used to describe a belief in something clearly false, it is not “blind faith” at all but rather “blind (and erroneous) belief.”
Answer 2
I consider “blind faith,” in the way it’s typically used, to be an oxymoron. Faith that IGNORES all reality, fact, reason, science, and truth is not faith at all, but merely a vain belief.
“True faith,” on the other hand, builds upon all that is known and is necessarily consistent with the truth that is not known, by definition. One cannot, by God’s definition of “faith,” have faith in anything false. Only man’s invented definition of faith allows for “blind faith” in something that is false.
Thus, it’s easy for me to say that there are no benefits to the kind of blind faith that ignores reality, fact, reason, science, and truth. None. Only losses - with the greatest loss of all being that to the degree one adopts the kind of “blind faith” that leads to the acceptance of vain beliefs, one is prevented from finding the truth that one finds by adopting “true faith.”
Answer 3
By its scriptural meaning, faith is trust in the truth of things that can’t be seen, i.e. proven with certainty. Thus faith begins with some degree of “blindness” - but it is a fallacious misunderstanding of faith to think that where there is evidence, there is no faith - because evidence alone does not yield sure knowledge. There was once seemingly sensory evidence that the world is flat.
Yet that belief in a flat earth was not faith. It was a vain belief that yielded no power to adherents- only limitations.
Where there is certain knowledge of proven truth, there is no need for faith. Faith follows evidence but accepts truth before it can be known with certainty. Faith is thus a spiritual condition of the mind and not a physical condition of the senses.
One cannot have faith in a falsehood - that is merely a vain belief.
Faith is a principle of power, inspiration, and knowledge of truth.
Faith in that which is yet unknown but true - i.e. a hypothesis that proves to be true - becomes knowledge over time with experience and empirical trial.
Trust in that which is false - i.e. a hypothesis that proves to be false - is merely a vain belief that can never become knowledge. Only the illusion of knowledge.
All scientific knowledge thus begins with faith - trust in the yet unknown that cannot be seen and is not yet proven.
If God is not real, then trust in God is a vain belief, which will never become knowledge, and worse, will never yield the power that comes with knowledge in the lives of adherents.
If God is real, then trust in God is real and true, and will yield knowledge over time with experience, and will yield the power that comes with knowledge in the lives of adherents.
Those who have faith in God gain more and more knowledge of God until they begin to experience miracles and recognize the daily miracles that surround us all that are invisible to those without faith. And they eventually gain a certain knowledge that God is real, because all evidence and all empirical experience combines to prove beyond any doubt that God has rewarded true faith throughout history with revelation and miracles.
Those who consider faith in God to be a vain belief and seek signs (“proof”) before they will believe never obtain the knowledge of God or experience with God necessary to turn their own vain belief that there is no God into knowledge. They have chosen to believe that all faith is vain when the truth is that faith is never vain. Faith in God bears fruit in the lives of believers. False beliefs in the wrong god’s or idols don’t yield a thing, however. So what is vain is the arrogant clinging to falsehoods about faith and God and the resultant hopelessness, despair, nihilism, negativity, pessimism, cynicism, and scorn for faith and the faithful.
Both the faithful and the faithless will find exactly what they seek, according to the word of God. Thankfully, the faithless can find faith - all it takes is a change of heart. The scriptures command us to soften our heart and ask, seek, and knock.
That is the way ordained of God for us to learn the difference between faith and vain belief, learn how to abandon our vain beliefs, and convert our faith to knowledge, line upon line and precept upon precept.