>> hi, lord, i got a question you for. >> what's up, god? >> hey, god. >> bad things always happen to me. >> my question is -- >> hi, god. >> hi god. >> one question for you, if i could ask you --. >> now, today's question is one some of us are afraid to ask. in fact, a few of the people who asked this question even wondered if it would be okay with god that we ask this question, so we're a little nervous but the question is real, so here we go. it's time to ask god.

>> god, i need to ask you a question. all the world's religions say you have to have faith. i'm wondering, how do you find faith? how do you know what it is? if you do find it, how do you know you have enough of it? what is faith? >> god, that's our question today, what is faith? our topic is that. i have several guests. mike chawson is a pastor of an emerging church. in your daily life what is something you do that takes some faith? >> day to day it's just having faith in myself, knowing all my faults and my failings takes a lot of faith to just believe in myself. >> just to get up in the morning and do what you have to do to come on the show. >> exactly. >> that's good. another guest we have tomb is

tamara boggs, an author and speaker. what is something that takes faith in your daily life? >> when i opened the package i bought at the store, i have faith that what is in it is in the package, that not only will it be edible, but that there won't be poison in it. >> good. >> and vince, vince bacote, professor of theology, how about you? >> just getting out on the street and driving. we have to trust that the other drivers are going to obey the rules and aren't going to run me off the road. >> good. our final guest is judson paling at willow creek community church on staff there. how about you? what is something that takes faith for you? >> just today sitting in this chair. i sat down and trusted it wouldn't fall out from underneath me or someone wouldn't pull it back the minute i sat here. >> do we weigh risks before we put our faith in something or do you just sit down? >> most of the time you don't

think about t you use faith without thinking about it. it is part of your life. >> faith is most of the times based on some type of experience previously. you get out on the road. you have driven before. even if you have had one accident, 99.9% of the time, drivers don't target you, we hope. >> it is not absolute, that's true. >> it's not absolute, but it's also not blind. you have experience and it is not like you are taking it totally -- >> right. your example with driving. so if you had several accidents you might think about it more consciously. >> you have seen all that glass onto road, you might think, wow, do i want to go through this intersection? >> there comes a time when you see enough damage and you stop having faith. >> so we weigh the risks and we look at our experiences. well, we have gone back out on

the street to find answers to this question, what something faith? let's listen to what people had to say back on the street. faith to me is to be able to believe in a god that you don't see. >> total, like, giving yourself over to god. >> strong belief. >> need to look beyond what's here. >> it's something that you believe in when you feel like it's the last think where you can put your thinking and actions and beliefs an everything in. >> faith is believing in something. >> it is enough to make me live for. >> belief in the unknown without any supporting evidence.

>> all right. i'm with her. i think faith is hard to define. other responses to this -- >> the interesting thing is that they all find it as belief in something. usually if you don't have enough evidence or enough -- one guy said it is believing without evidence. i hiked his point. that is the common idea that faith goes against reason. i don't agree with that. >> it is blind faith. there is a band by that name, blind faith, this idea that it's just going out somewhere with your eyes closed. >> going is not true but doing something anyway. >> mark twain says faith is believing in something that you know ain't so. >> before we go further in trying to define faith, i want to point out our jargon jar on the table. you may have played with it before as guests on this show, but you have a piece of chocolate or two or five in front of you. these are our jargon coins. what we want you to do is use

words that are real, not christian-ese, but keep it real, so if it makes sense to neighbors and my kids, all right, but if you use some jargon, you have to pay up f you hear anybody else using jargon, feel free to buzz them. give me jargon words right now. give me words that might not be all right. >> i love the word propeciation. >> okay. put one in. whatever that word was! there we go. we will stay away from those words. let's focus now on our yes. that question is what is faith? >> going back to what judson was saying about evidence, well, the classic scriptures, hebrews 11:1, faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. there is a sense that there is not just assurance but there is actually evidence. faith itself is the evidence of things that we don't see. >> how is that different from

the things that judson was opposed to, the person who said that faith was like this blind thing? how is that different in the evidence of things? >> it is not a complete lack of evidence. you have reason, reasons to believe, but it's a lack of certainty. it's a lack of saying well, i don't know for sure, i can't prove it 100%, but i choose to make that leap of faith. >> i think of a bridge. you have posts that hold up the bridge, and there are sprans that go between the posts. posts are like the evidence, an faith is the span between the evidence that supports the entire bridge so you can get from one place to the other. >> what about the guy who said it was a confidence booster? remember the guy who said he thought it was a confidence booster s that what we're talking about? >> is it a thing we possess or is it more like a relationship? i mean, faith in terms of a response to god, and a journey with god, this relationship that we have ongoing. is it something that we actually

-- i got it or i don't have it. >> how do we have faith in other relationships other than god? what faith do we need in relationships? >> there is a difference in believing in something, like you believe something one tells you like believing in vince. >> you can trust vince. >> i trust him. faith to me is trust. it is like they trust in a marriage relationship, a covenant. >> you say a marriage covenant, i pledge to love you and i pledge to love you and then i can trust that hoff. i think what we need to do is use a communication tool here. we have a few of these on ask god, and this one is called get real. okay. it's time for get real. here we go. it's bedtime, and your

7-year-old is looking up with big eyes, and asks the question, and there is a short attention span here, so you have one minute to answer and somebody's got to do it -- daddy, mommy, what is faith? one minute, go. what's the answer? >> faith is like when you were a baby and i carried you, and in carrying you, i'm not going to drop you. faith is like that holding on to something like that. >> yeah. >> i would say that faith is when you trust that your parents are good and kind and love you. it's that trust that you have in me and your mom. >> see, i always blew these. i never got it right. i'm going to blow this one, too. >> just give it a try. >> i'll make it real simple. trust. >> good night, honey. it's trust.

all right, then. we have one more player for get real. tamara, what is faith? >> honey, faith is believing that jesus has come and died for your sins to take away your sins so that you can go to heaven. how is that? >> i think my little 7-year-old honey would need to buzz you. i don't know. >> oh, okay. >> can you throw one in? can you explain believing? >> i admit that's very true. i guess i said that because a lot of times is that that is what i was taught in sunday school, and it sort of whence right over my head, and i had no idea and it goes to what i said earlier about believing in jesus and in so many words it means to trust in. >> it is about the relationship. i have faith in my wife. that doesn't mean i believe she exists. of course i believe she exists. i have faith in her love and

goodness an relationship with me. >> even when she is not with you and you can't see here even long periods of being apart, there's trust. >> right, but the difference is that god is invisible. at least you have a physical presence as well as her character, so you don't have to struggle with the belief that your wife exists. you might have to struggle with trusting her, but in our journey with god, we literally cannot believe he's there, and a lot of people think they have evidence he is not there. >> it comes back to hebrews 11:1, evidence of things hoped for and not seen. it is both, that belief in the things we can't see, but also hope in the promises an goodness of god, too. >> this has been good conversation. i think we have established basics about the definition, but i want you to stay tuned for our next segment, because we are going to be looking for proof. >> coming up on ask god -- >> we're not robots then?

>> god has not made us to obey? oh, know! >> we take a visit to the ivory tower. >> abilities that you see, and something called depravity.

>> hello up there. i have a question, an basically what i'm wondering is, you know, with all religion, what it comes down to is you have to have a leap of faith as to whether there is a god or whether there isn't. what i want to know is why is it that we have to have that leap of faith and we can't just know, we can't have more proof that gives us more substantial reason to believe. if you are up there, why did you create that requirement for people to take that leap of faith in order to worship you, whereas if it was more noticeable, people would worship you in a better way. >> god, why do you require this? why isn't there more proof? this is a good question. what do we think about this? >> there are a class of things that god created and they didn't have to have any struggle to know. they are called angels. the bible says he created

angels. they never requested that he exists. they were in his presence, they knew he was there. the bible tells us that a host of them disobeyed him and left that relationship with him. the assumption that we make that faith is if we just had his presence indisputable, he would have that connection with us. this part of the story tells us that's not true. just to be sure he's there doesn't mean that. >> we know that the demons in the boss spells recognize jesus -- in the gospels recognized jesus. they had no doubt who he was. they distance put their faith, their trust in him at all. >> faith is more than just -- it might include more in believing that god exists but it is more in the relationship, the two-way trust. >> but is there? >> i mean, it's interesting that he says a leap of faith. so, it's like he doesn't want to have to have a leap.

he wants to just be able to walk right on over, and he's assuming that faith requires -- >> that's a common phrase, a leap of faith. >> it is. it is worse than the indiana jones movie with the holy grail. he steps out with what is apparently invisible, but it seems like he thinks that if you just had all the evidence that judson says, that it's going to be easier for him. >> again, isn't that how god created us, in a garden where god walked with us, and that gap wasn't there, and still, you know, what is the real issue here? you know, we made a choice of departing from god, so first of all, not everyone -- i mean, again, the implication is that if god was walking with us, of course we would believe in him. well, no, apparently not, and

then you go to the old testament. pillar of fire. hello, god! you know, this is awesome. >> yeah, this is parting waters. how much more there can you get, an yet we know that story, and i am sorry to say that god can be just that evident to me. i'm not preaching here. you know, he is that evident to me and i still struggle with faith. >> gee us did miracles and his point was that people found a way to take the miraculous and explain it away. >> even explained it away saying we know what your secret is, you're doing this by the hand of demons, aren't you? >> so you're saying there is enough evidence, or you're saying that you get enough evidence. >> sometimes it doesn't happen. >> you have enough but what about the guy in the video that doesn't have enough, or does he? >> i want to suggest something. it's not just that we don't have

enough evidence, but sometimes we have too much in the sense that god is all around us. if god create everything, an everything we see is in some sense evidence of god, the nature of the trees and the sky and the sea. you know, the relationships surnz us. we see god in other people. there's two ways to be blind, right? you can have an absence of light and you can't see, or you can have too much light and you're blienzed by the light. sometimes we have a hard time believing in god because we get too much of him. >> how is this man defining god? >> how is he defining him? i don't think everyone has the same standard of proof. >> what would be proof for him? >> there is evidence around, but is he seeing the evidence? >> is he seeing the pillars of fire or looking around and saying all of this points to a god? >> is that what you would tell him? >> yeah. some people, maybe not for him, i think what they want, they want to be able to go into a lab, look under a microscope and

say now that i can see all the fine details -- >> rather than looking at the children. >> right. >> so you're saying it is a scientific standard here? proof is what is in this modern world a scientific standard and yet any good scientist will tell you they all go back to faith. they all go back to some theory or something that they have faith in that let's them know this is real. >> what the bible will tell you is that what you wind up with is more questions rather than answers. >> they might tell you that there is some things that science can't answer. ththere are certain questions that are still important questions but that this particular method isn't suited for t. >> i think god's existence is one of those kinds of questions. >> relationships are. scientists could not tell me should i marry this woman. >> talk about relationships in terms of evidence, too. here is another kind of evidence. for this man on the street, who is struggling with faith, give

me evidence, and i want to say, you know, god brings someone of faith into his life to walk with him, to be with him. isn't that the road to the mass an jesus says their heart force burnes within them. do we have proof alone with individuals? >> sometimes we get the idea that faith is strictly, you know, something that happens on an island, you by yourself, and that at the end of the day, it's completely up to you, but it's very interesting. very few people are experiencing anything in isolation in the bible. >> that's very true. >> think of all the old testament things, pillar of fire, moses parting the waters, how they passed into the promised land. they were all looking.

they were all together, right? >> well, they were looking at the stuff out there. >> we now have each other to be that presence. >> yes, yes. >> we are are the pillars of fire. we are the -- >> i'm not a pillar! >> one day i might be the pillar of fire for you, and then summary next day, i might be looking at you because i am in a pit of doubt. iwe are are the image of god, so if you want to see god, look at each other. >> whoa! whoa! >> ultimately, look at jesus, all right. here is jesus, you know, god, in the flesh god is with us. >> incarnation. >> that is such a cool word. >> how does incarnational relate

to this request for proof? >> when we talk about jesus as the incarnation, we're talking about jesus coming into our form, you know, in carnational in body, and so that we can understand so that we can see, and in that way, as we were talking, we become that presence of christ to each other, that presence of god to each other, and not in perfection like jesus did. oh, my goodness, no, but that is a valid way, i think of proof of evidence, and i think you can talk all day about the theologies, and it won't give evidence as much as walking alongside someone, and just living your life and trying to love them as got loves you. >> one thing that we have been saying is that we have been saying that the church is evidence. i know, that's wierd. >> you like that? >> i like that! >> i think if we went back and

said, well, you know your church is evidence, he would say what kind of church is this? >> we're going to go back to the street to find some answers. the mother answers to this question, this where is evidence and where is proof, and after we do that, we have a surprise, and you're going to want to experience this surprise. i'll give you a hint. it's love potion! next on ask god, so here is my love potion right here. you drink it, they are yours. >> can you really coerce someone into loving you? >> you're on ask god. our guests are attempting a unique form of communication called dialogue. dialogue is not discussion. it's not debate. the guests don't get to lecture at each other. dialogue requires us to have

empathy, ongoing empathy for the other members of the group. empathy doesn't mean that we avoid disagreement, but rather that we work to demonstrate that we have understood the prospectives, the feelings of the others, so, as we're talking, i will need to respond to what you're saying and integrate your perspective, not argue with your perspective or tell you why i'm wrong and you're right, but rather with a new comment that integrates your perception. it's worth it to learn this skill, to be prebts present, to be authentic, to honor the experiences and prospective of others. that's what we are trying to do

>> basically what i want to know is to believe in religion and believe in god, you have to take a leap of faith.

if you are up there, why did you create that requirement for people to take that leap of faith? >> it's a tough one, but it's all about trust. >> faith is from within. you have to find it in yourself. >> he wants people to follow him that really believe in our truth and the things that he does. >> it applies to more things than just god. it is not one concrete answer and everyone is intep pret it the way they want so it can fit their lives better> >> it is something no one forces on you. you give it to your self and that's how you get your blessings. that's how it works. >> everything in the world is an example of god saying here i am, worship me, but a lot of people don't accept it. >> so that's what they had to say out on the streets.

>> i heard in there people talking about faith as a means to blessing. a lot of it all has to do with what's within me, what my definition is. >> it's a way to get your blessings. we have this idea that faith is something that you give to god so he will reward you, whether it is wealth, influence or a ticket to heaven. if it is an economic transaction. i give god faith an he will give me stuff. >> for some people, it's the perfect transaction to get the american dream. >> there you go. >> it's like i put in my faith, part of it here, and god is going to give me a three-car garage and a bunch of cadillacs. >> so you get your formula right, your magic formula right, then you get what you want, but is it about me or about god? >> do you get that when you decide who you are going to marry? do g