It should be obvious to anyone who skims my blog (pretty much no one does, but if someone did it should be obvious to them!) that I'm not too interested in the sorts of discussions that predominate on most forums. Debating Bible verses and Christian doctrines has limited appeal to me anyway and too often results in ad hominem attacks and hurt feelings. (When a thread starts out with a title like "Calvinism is the height of spiritual depravity!" – well, you know it's not going to be pretty.)
My main interest is in religious epistemology: What does it mean to say we "believe" and "have faith?" (Epistemology is the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of knowledge.)
These aren't just academic questions. They are very real and personal. Examining what it means to say we believe and have faith can deepen our own convictions – or perhaps challenge them. It can help us understand why others seem to believe so differently.
For many people, examining what it means to say they believe and have faith is anathema. The very notion frightens them. The examination might expose things they don't want to expose, even to themselves. They just want to believe and have faith, whatever that may mean, because believing and having faith is what Christians do or at least say they do.
This attitude is by no means unique to Christians. I encountered the same thing in my discussions with atheists. Many couldn't tell you why they were atheists or what the term even meant to them. They were just atheists, damn it. Now go away and leave them alone (so they could get on with ridiculing you for being just another delusional Christian!).
One useful epistemological distinction, it seems to me, is between what I call Top-Down Faith and Bottom-Up Faith.
Top-Down Faith
Top-Down Faith is surely the more common. The vast majority of people land in Christianity or even a particular denomination almost entirely on the basis of parental indoctrination, the influence of other early authority figures, cultural influences, social pressures and whatnot.
(Just an aside, but I'm always amused at how often Christian leaders emphasize the critical importance of "getting them early." Many insist a conversion by age 12 is critical. This is because large numbers of those who come to faith in their teen years lose their faith when they enter college. Surely this concern about "getting them earlly" speaks volumes. Perhaps, to quote Bob Dylan, they "had no faith to lose.")
By an early age, these folks' Christianity is solidly in place. Their conversion, at perhaps age six or eight, was inevitable. They accept the whole ball of wax as taught to them by parents, teachers, pastors and other authority figures. Christianity for them is a self-contained belief system that there is no reason to examine or question. There is no reason to consider other belief systems. Christianity provides all the answers and the Christian walk is simply a matter of continuing in and perhaps going deeper into the faith.
Top-Down Faith is also common among adults for whom Christianity provided deliverance from an addiction or some personal crisis. It's the anchor of their lives. It has to be true. They can't afford to examine or question it. They can only cling to it with both hands. Whatever church or ministry brought them deliverance is where they will gratefully remain.
In short, Top-Down Faith is one that buys into Christianity from the get-go as a complete belief system and never has to confront the underlying evidential, philosophical and metaphysical issues.
This doesn't mean Top-Down Christians don't "really" believe or don't "really" have faith. Many do, of course. It simply means their faith is often an unexamined one. The faith itself is never really examined and possible alternatives are certainly never examined. These folks simply believe, either because it's always been part and parcel of who they are or because it's a life preserver they cling to with both hands like a drowning man.
Many Top-Down Christians insist their faith deepens and self-proves its reality as the Holy Spirit works in their lives and reveals God's truths to them. I have no reason to doubt this is true since I've experienced the same thing in my own Bottom-Up Faith. (The only thing that gives me pause is that I also very clearly experienced the protective and guiding hand of an Unseen Other long before I'd given any thought to Christianity.)
Bottom-Up Faith
Bottom-Up Faith is – duh – pretty much the opposite.
As described in my testimony, I had zero parental indoctrination or Christian background. I had a startling conversion experience at age 20 that could have been the foundation for a Top-Down Faith: Wow, it's all real!!!
Perhaps because I was 20 and not two or ten, I wasn't able to take the experience at face value. It might've been real but it might also have been the product of my own psyche or the spicy tamales I had for lunch. So I used it as the launching pad for what became a Bottom-Up Faith. (Without this launching pad, I might well have never had any faith at all. That's why I believe God reached down and touched me when He did.)
I realized there were threshold questions to be answered before I could fully accept my conversion experience. What is the nature of reality? If materialism is true, Christianity isn't. If the mind dies with the brain and there is no survival of death, that would put a big dent in the Christian paradigm. If atheism is true, Christianity isn't. If Hinduism is true, Christianity isn't. And so on and so forth, through most of the essential questions with which philosophy and metaphysics grapple.
To repeat, Top-Down Faith doesn't have to deal with such questions. The answers are all built into the Christian paradigm. Materialism, atheism and Hinduism are by definition false. Reality is as Christianity describes it. End of discussion.
As I constructed my belief system from the bottom up, my conversion experience gradually took on a reality it didn't have at the time. Through further experience and observation and a great deal of study and reflection, I eventually answered all the threshold questions in a way consistent with Christianity.
Materialism is false. Check. Consciousness is capable of surviving death. Check. A supernatural realm exists. Check. Theism is more plausible than atheism or deism. Check. Of the available theistic options, Christianity meshes the best with my experiences and observations of myself and the reality I inhabit. Check. All this supports that my conversion experience was real. Check, check, check.
My leap of faith thus was a small one based on a series of prior convictions I had reached. It would have been a somewhat bigger leap without my conversion experience, but not a great deal bigger. Many who come to Christianity as adults make a similarly informed leap without any startling experience.
Even having made the initial leap, I wasn't through. Because Christianity hadn't been handed to me on a platter when I was toddler, I had to construct my own understanding from the bottom up. Unlike a fifth-generation Catholic or Southern Baptist, I had to fumble my way to what I actually believed (and was capable of believing) within the broad framework of Christianity.
Some who come to Christianity via a bottom-up route convert directly into Catholicism or Southern Baptism or whatever and thus are spared this additional task. My guess is, however, that those who enter Christianity from the bottom up are more likely than Top-Down Christians to continually examine what they believe and why.
JESUS IS THE ANSWER, BUT WHAT ARE THE QUESTIONS?
This droll bumper sticker from my college days captures the essential distinction.
Top-Down Christian: Jesus is the answer to every question you could possibly ask. That's all you need to know.
Bottom-Up Christian: Yeah, what are the questions? Let's get to work on that.
No big deal, just a way of thinking about what you believe and why – and why your understanding of what it means to be a Christian may seem so different from someone else's. Neither route is necessarily better or more pleasing to God.
