Faith and Parasailing

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

(The Swing, Robert Louis Stevenson)

Last month my wife and I were in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. In the back of my mind I thought it might be fun to parasail. I've seen people parasail in Florida, saw videos of people doing it, it looked like the pleasantest thing that ever a guy could do! But would I actually do it? It could be expensive. Perhaps it was dangerous.

The moment of decision came one morning as we were relaxing on the beach. I short Mexican guy (who called himself "Shimp") stood on the beach near us flying a small parachute kite indicating he was selling parasailing rides. I then pondered whether or not to do it. Lots of thoughts raced through my mind. Was it too expensive? No -- I asked Shimp and he quoted a price that was a lot lower than I expected. The weather was nice, no storm, no winds, no lightning to fry me while up in the air. The parachute looked big. The boat that would pull me liked tiny -- but the engine looked big. Wait, I'm overweight, is the engine big enough? I looked again, yes maybe the engine was big enough. This was going to be a beach takeoff and landing. Could they do it? I saw Shrimp's crew pull someone else in a parachute -- but wait, did I? I saw the parasailing the previous day from my hotel balcony and I don't know if these were the same people. Could I do it? Land on the beach. I gulped and decided I could.

As I took that step off the beach, I thought of Kierkegaard's "leap of faith." In many ways I had put my life into the hands and equipment of a guy I knew only for only 10 minutes, a crew I never meet before, a boat and equipment I wasn't sure I'd seen do this before.

Was I warranted to put my trust in these people and their equipment? Considering the risk of my life and limb, was I justified in putting my faith in them?

Faith in the Christian life is often modeled in the way I approached parasailing. I look at the world around me. I have some basic beliefs about this world. I look at the possibility of placing my faith in Christ. I marshal the evidence, reason it out and then make my leap of faith. Is that how it works? Am I warranted in developing beliefs about Christ? Am I justified to do so?

The model I used for faith in parasailing does not fit with what actually happens in a Christian's life when she turns to Christ with faith. I need to explore a few more issues to narrow in on a model that better describes what happens when a Christian places her faith in Christ.

Cold Pizza and Basic Beliefs

In the previous post on faith I wrote that there were some inadequacies with what I wrote. What was incomplete? I'll get to that, but first I want to explore the idea of basic beliefs that Alvin Plantinga writes about in various books.

Imagine that I am walking on a beach in Florida and musing over some thoughts.



Okay, I don't normally stroll on the beach thinking the thought 1+2=3, but these thoughts in this contrived example illustrate the concept of basic beliefs. Normally, basic beliefs fall into the following categories:

• A priori -- self evident beliefs that are always true. The basic facts of arithmetic, such as 1+2=3, 5x4=20, or modus ponens (if a then b, so given a is true, then b must be true).


• Senses -- belief of things derived from the senses. When I am walking on the beach, I sense I am walking in water, on sand and feel the warmth of the Sun shining on me.


• Memory -- belief in things or events that I recall from my memory. Let's say I ate some left over cold greasy pizza slices for breakfast that morning. My memory presents the events to me of what I did and I simply believe it.


• Internal -- Belief in the things I feel about internally about myself. If my stomach is out of sorts I feel sick.

Basic beliefs are not a fixed set of beliefs. The self evident beliefs can change and grow in time. When I was 5 years old, I knew 1+2=3, but 4x5=20 was not a basic belief yet. As I grew older, my set of self evident beliefs grew. There is much more to say about basic beliefs. For instance, when I look out the front window of my house I see a tree. That is a basic belief based on what my sight presents me. How I grew as an infant to learning the properties of treeness from my parents and others can be an interesting discussion that I will not get into this series.

The next post will explore using basic beliefs to build other beliefs.