Blind Faith = Stupid Faith

One of the classic low-octane assaults on Christianity by nonbelievers is that Christians blindly follow. After that the idea of exactly what Christians are blindly following gets kind of muddled: a god that doesn't exist, a charismatic leader, a paper pope, a real pope, a book filled with fables, a cult built on lies. Unfortunately that's how the fallen world sees us, blindly following something that they know doesn't exist. In their eyes Christians are just plain stupid.

I've been told I have blind faith in a God that doesn't exist by a Wiccan. Seriously. In hindsight my rolling on the floor in gales of laughter was probably the wrong reaction, but come on - think about it. It's funny.

In reality if these assaults were educated assaults there would be far fewer assaults. God doesn't want  blind followers Name one religion that demands that you test everything you're taught. A true Christian know that one of his or her  responsibilities is to learn what's good and bad:

19 Do not quench the Spirit; 20 do not despise prophetic utterances. 21 But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; 22 abstain from every form of evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22)

No other holy book asks its reader to put what it says to the test. The Bible can make this bold statement because its truthfulness passes every test put to it.

The Bible does not demand blind faith, God wants us to think, after all he is the one that gave us the ability to reason (Proverbs 2:6) and He wants us to use that ability to determine His plan of salvation. Eventually once God and dealt with the wicked He is going to test our minds (Psalm 7:9). Our minds are very important to God, multiple times He says He will put His law in our minds: Jeremiah 31:33, Hebrews 8:10, Hebrews 10:16. The mind is very important to a Christian as we are expounded to use our minds to investigate and to learn (Ecclesiastes 7:25) The Bible also says that those who do not believe do not believe because the god of this world (Satan) had veiled their minds

³ And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, ⁴ in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:3-4)

Good Christians are knowledgeable, especially regarding their faith because a lack of knowledge leads to apostasy and destruction. (Hosea 4:6), and a pure zeal for God falls short of what he wants from us. Yes, God wants us to love him but he wants us to know why we love him. Paul preached the gospel reasoning from the scriptures taking every word he taught from the old testament and never appealed to a blind faith. (Romans 10:2). Paul was especially proud of the Bereans, calling them 'noble-minded' because even though they received the word from Paul with great eagerness, when Paul was done they went home and opened the scriptures and doublechecked everything he taught them (Acts 17:11) Jesus Himself taught us that loving God with heart and soul is not enough, we need to use our brains:

And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ (Matthew 22:37)

While knowledge is great for Christianity it's the deathknell for cults. The Christian flavored cult Mormonism looses more members to the true Gospel of Christ than any other reason. For that reason their members are dissuaded from reading anything but their own version of the bible, the Authorized King James version, which the Mormon church claims is improperly translated and is 'corrected' by the Book of Mormon. Mormons have lots of books, the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Wisdom, Doctrine and Covenants, yet when Mormons read the true Gospel of Jesus with an open heart, they leave that church.

The Christian sounding Jehovah's witnesses are an interesting cult, they have their own bible, The New World Translation. This bible has the notoriety of being the first Bible that was translated, revised, and edited with the intentional purpose of changing God's word to agree with a groups doctrine. The Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe that Jesus was crucified on a cross so they did away with that reference. The Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in hell, so they did away with that too. The Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe that Jesus is God so they re-translated John 1:1 to read "...and the word was a god." and there's a whole lot more. The controlling cabal of the Jehovah's witnesses is the Watchtower society, and the Watchtower society claims that they are the only people on earth who truly understand the Bible.

Jehovah's witnesses are not allowed to do a lot of things: vote, serve in the military, celebrate holidays, read Christian literature, and read the bible alone. The Watchtower society knows that if you read Christian literature you may see the flaws of the JW's belief system, and if you read the bible without someone telling you what to think you will reject the JW's anti-trinitarian beliefs.

Blind faith is stupid faith, and God does not want His followers to be stupid, He wants us to know about Him and the world. He wants us to be able to answer the worlds questions about Him. He wants us to be able to defend our faith and to preach His word and you can't do that by stumbling in the dark.