Mission Unpacked Part 5

2019-06-05T13:49:51-07:00 October 20th, 2017|Tags: , , |

Weekly Impact is written for leaders by our Executive Director, Garth Jestley, who has decades of experience in senior leadership roles in the financial services sector. Each week he will share insights on life, leadership and faith.

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts unpacking the mission of LeaderImpact – “helping marketplace leaders explore the relevance of faith in God in their professional and personal lives.” In this post, I will unpack some aspects of “faith in God.”

In the 21st century, the word “faith” is often used to describe beliefs unsupported by evidence, particularly in the Western world. For this reason, many argue that science and faith are mutually exclusive.

In fact, there are many, particularly among the so-called “new atheists,” who define God as “the god of the gaps.” Specifically, to the extent that science cannot yet explain a particular aspect of physical reality, they contend that people simply insert god as an explanation. By extension, as the frontier of scientific knowledge expands, the need for “a god explanation” grows smaller. Once we know everything, we can do away with the need for a god!

As Christians, we do not believe in “god of the gaps.” In our view, the existence of the Creator explains everything. The role of science is the pursuit of the laws or explanations underlying the space-time continuum created by all powerful God.

All religions can be false but not all can be true.

So what do we mean by faith? According to the Oxford Dictionary, faith is simply “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” It is not wishful thinking to help us cope with life’s challenges. Rather, the Christian faith is based on solid evidence confirmed by the vast majority of scholars down through the centuries to the present day. In particular, their studies consistently confirm the historicity of the Bible generally and Jesus specifically – His birth, miracles, teachings, death and resurrection. In addition, our trust in God is validated by our personal experience of Him at work in our lives.

What do we mean by God? I recently had lunch with a friend who went through the MBA program with me. We were debating faith issues and he allowed that “religion” has sometimes been a force for good, particularly as it creates caring communities with shared values.

To be clear, LeaderImpact is not promoting religion generally but the Christian faith specifically. In our postmodern world, many believe that all religions are alike in that they point in the same direction; i.e., the same God. Any study of different religions, however, will quickly dispel this notion. All religions can be false but not all can be true.

At LeaderImpact, we believe that the God of the Bible is the one true God and that, through Jesus’ sacrifice, we are reconciled to God. In fact, Jesus made the following exclusive claim: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

Next week, I will finish this blog series by discussing how LeaderImpact ties to our professional and personal lives. In the meantime, we encourage you to try one of our peer groups to explore the relevance of faith in God.

Garth Jestley is a husband, father, grandfather, leader and business executive. Most importantly, he is a follower of Jesus Christ.