Without faith it's impossible...

And without faith it is impossible to please God, - Hebrews 11:6

The bible tells us that without faith its impossible to please God. It’s deemed by Christians to be one of the most important things when it comes to being a Christian. It’s considered a virtue. Christians will even say, when asked how they can believe in something that can’t be proven to exist, they will say “by faith”.

But really, is faith all it’s cracked up to be? Could it just be an excuse to believe what you want to believe, no matter how crazy? Could it be an excuse to throw aside all arguments against your belief so you can hold onto it? Is it just an excuse for stubbornness?

Could it even lead you to believing something false?

Is there any guarantee that by having faith you will find the truth?

The answer is clearly no.  There are no guarantees of finding the truth, when we employ faith and you could indeed be led into lies. Just look at all the false religions there are on the planet. All people believing by faith and coming to wrong conclusions and worshiping wrong gods.

We don’t even have to look outside of Christianity to see people employing faith and believing nonsense. Just look at all the thousands of Christian denominations.  and cults out there that are deemed by other Christians to be false. This world is flooded with Christians of all types, eg Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, etc, who are deemed by many to be false Christians and even Satanic, yet all these people have genuine faith in the god of the bible. They truly believe they are being faithful and pleasing God.

How is it that this thing called faith can lead people to so many errors? How is it, it can lead people into cults and other warped versions of Christianity?

There’s only one obvious answer and that’s because faith is no guarantee at all, you will find the truth. Anything can be believed by having faith, no matter how crazy it is.

I could claim I have fairies in my garden and say that I believe in them because I have faith. Would that be any more absurd that a Christian belonging to some warped Christian cult that claims they have faith in Jesus?

Faith can lead you down the garden path (even to fairies and maybe even Bigfoot or the Lochness Monster).

Even a committed Christian who claims to be guided by the holy spirit and in a relationship with God, can see where faith can lead people. They come across Christians every day who have warped ideas and who claim to have the holy spirit guiding them. Who claim to have faith. They come across Christians all the time who they claim are false Christians.

Then there are also ex-Christians. Many Christians will come across them and claim “You were never a true Christian”, yet that ex-Christian may have had unwavering faith at one point and perhaps even come to Christ in their childhood. What good did that faith do them in the end if it were never good enough to begin with? 

Any Christian can surely see that faith does not necessarily please God at all. It could in fact enrage God, especially if that faith leads them to incorrect views of Christianity. It could even lead to them being spat out of his mouth and on Judgement Day being told "I never knew you". 

So how can we possibly rely on faith to get us to the truth? How can we possibly be assured that our faith pleases God?  We just can’t.

Faith is only necessary if you don’t have good evidence of something. If you have good evidence, you don’t need faith.