Faith it the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
I offer the faith of Christians as the evidence that the Bible is a reality.
If you think about it, Christians are an upside-down people when compared to the rest of the world.
The fact that there are people who have an opposite paradigm than what is normal ought to be considered as evidence that the reason for that opposite paradigm has validity, if its basis be in something that happened in world history that also changed history, like the Cross of Jesus Christ.
This thing wasn't accomplished in some corner of the woods. It is very much in the face of atheists and those who have a worldly paradigm.
If anyone is going to go to hell, they have to trample over the Cross of Jesus Christ; because it stands in the way of their path, and it calls them to salvation. It presents a way of living that is exactly opposite to what is normal in the world...even to the extent that people who actually live like the Bible says they ought to, are sometimes subjected to psychological evaluation and deemed to be mentally ill. But in all reality they are not. The Bible says that
God hath not given us the spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7. Nevertheless it also says,
Hos 9:7, The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred.
Because of the great hatred that is objected against Christians and Jews (for that we are the source of the Judeo-Christian ethic, which is considered to be restricting by the world, see Psalms 2:3), even those who hold to the Judeo-Christian ethic (those who are spiritual) are singled out in psychology with terms like
persecution complex and
religious preoccupation. If someone actually believes and lives like Matthew 5:10-12, or 2 Timothy 3:10-12 is a reality; or if someone obeys 1 Peter 2:1-3 and/or Psalms 1, then they are considered to be mentally ill if or when they go before the psychiatrist. Don't believe me? Read about it in your psychology books.
So then, it is not that believers have an actual mental illness, but that we are considered to have a mental illness because we hold to a different paradigm than does the rest of the world. As it is written,
2Co 5:13, For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause.
2Co 5:14, For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead:
2Co 5:15, And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.