Decisions without evidence

A comment some time ago stated the following in response to a question I asked about what we put trust in:

"Would you trust a friend with your secrets who you don't have evidence to believe they are trustworthy?

Would you trust a surgeon to operate on you who has a history of accidents and mistakes, or do you want the surgeon whose track record is clean? You are still required to trust in the surgeon, but you only do so with evidence that it would not be dangerous to do so.

Would you put your child in the hands of the Catholic Church when they have been proven to have a history of child abuse? 

You judge based on evidence every day. It's one of the most basic functions of the human mind, and we do it almost constantly."

I agree.  

But the fact of the matter to is that you and I, everyday, make decisions and put our faith in many things for which we do not have any evidence.  

When you drive down a street you have faith/trust the people in the other lane to not drive into your lane.


When we have work done on our cars, we trust people do not do harm to our car in hopes that we would return when the "fluid ran out".


When we park our cars in garages over long periods or when we board a plane, there is trust all around us.  Most of which there is no evidence for.  


And this is why, according to my theology, I do not understand why Christians are afraid of atheists.  We all trust.  We all have faith.  Atheists have faith.  


Attention my fellow Christians: There is no need to fear the Atheists.  
Attention self describing Atheists: There is no need to fear the Christian.  


Unless you put your faith in fear...

Shared Moments of Trust

A few years ago, my wife gave me a collection of essays from the "This I Believe" project from NPR. If you are not aware of this project, I highly recommend you check it out. In a nutshell, the project invites people of all sorts to write their credo in about 300 words. What a discipline to begin to practice, and not just about what we believe about God or Jesus or the Church.

Here is one of my favorites from Warren Christopher who believes in "A Shared Moment of Trust". You can read or listen to Mr. Christopher's thoughts.

I invite you to poke around and see if you find a submission that speaks to you and share that in a comment to this post.

Grace and Peace.

Filters

With all the information on the internet from the news reports coming in to the many viral videos circulating around. The emails which have been forwarded 100 times to the RSS reader "bolding" with each new blog post. Twitter and Facebook. Email and Texting.

I have never felt a greater need for filters in my life. Not so much filters to keep things clean or pure, but filters to keep the extra stuff out of that which I seek. It is like these filters are able to help me focus on what "is" rather than what "is not".

There are several filters in my life I use to remove the 'noise' in this information-polooza.

Facebook filter status updates.

TodaysBigThing.com filter viral videos.

Goodreads.com filter books.

Google Reader to filter all the blogs I follow.

Kyle Roberson to filter all things emergent church related.

Wikipedia to filter all my 'unknown' topics.

Rene Girard filters the way I read the Bible.

My wife filters true love. .

Seth Godin and TED talks filter the new and cutting edge.

TIME Magazine filters the news.

Nancy Allen filters spiritual things.

Mom and Dad filter love and support.

My brother filters the a lot of fun for me.

My son filters joy and innocence.

Who or what are your filters? What sources do you trust to filter out all the noise in your life?