Love is not blind, and neither is faith.

Luke 1:3 Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, ...

Luke clearly intends that this Gospel be received as a reliable record of eyewitness accounts. He produced it by checking things out as best he could but, frankly, he wasn’t there to see these things first hand. So how reliable can this really be? Well, some say it’s “the Inerrant Word of God”, but this seems pretty arbitrary, at least as a place to start.

I think, to begin with, the best we can do is grant that:

1. Luke is probably telling us things he believes to be true.
2. when it comes to history, trusting what others tell us is the best we ever do.

Virtually everything we believe about history, and about almost everything else as well, has come to us through witnesses we trust. Which is to say, almost all of even our best knowledge is acquired through thoughtful, judicious, receptive faith. This is discernment; it takes the evidence, sifts it, sorts it, and views it through the lens of life experience. For some Luke’s stories may be too fantastic, but, for many, life is so amazing that even some fantastic things, when sifted, sorted, and taken all together, just ring true.

At first my mother brushed my teeth. Then I took over, initially because she told me to, and then because of habit and social pressure. But, eventually I began to do it to preserve my teeth. I’ve never actually seen bacteria decay a tooth, but I believe they do. Life, as I know it, is certainly strange enough to accommodate such a possibility. And the witness of many scientists who claim to have seen bacteria doing their work, and the fact that, after a lifetime of brushing I still have teeth to brush, is evidence enough for me.

Can we accept Luke’s story by faith? Of course we can, because this is how we live; by faith. We even brush our teeth by faith.