Faith, Mortality, and the Age of the Human Mind

By Cliff Potts
Editor-in-Chief, WPS News

Faith is described in the Epistle to the Hebrews as “the substance of things not seen.” That line is often offered as reassurance, a soft landing for doubt. But read plainly, it is something else: an admission. Faith is required precisely because the world, as it is experienced, does not reliably demonstrate what belief claims. If the promises of religion were consistently visible in outcomes—justice rewarded, suffering relieved, prayers answered—faith would be unnecessary. Observation would suffice.

That tension becomes clearer when belief is placed back into its historical setting.

From the time of Jesus through much of the nineteenth century, average life expectancy hovered roughly between thirty and fifty years. For many, it was far less. Infant mortality was staggering. Mothers died in childbirth. Disease moved without warning. Famine was a recurring threat. Death was not abstract or postponed; it was intimate and routine. Most people lived with a constant awareness that life could end abruptly and without explanation.

In that context, religion did not merely address metaphysical questions. It met an immediate psychological need. The Gospel’s promises—eternal life, moral reckoning, divine justice—spoke directly to lives cut short and losses that arrived early. When death was a frequent companion, the idea that it was not the end carried extraordinary weight.

Modern neuroscience adds another layer that earlier believers could not have known. The human brain does not fully mature until approximately the mid-to-late twenties. Executive function, impulse control, long-range planning, and emotional regulation continue developing well beyond adolescence. By contemporary standards, many historical adults lived entire lives without ever reaching full neurological maturity.

That is not a moral judgment. It is an observation. A shorter lifespan meant fewer decades of accumulated disappointment, fewer cycles of hope raised and dashed, fewer long-term responsibilities that erode idealism over time. Emotional frameworks stabilized early because there was little time for them to be tested repeatedly. Belief systems formed young often remained intact not because they were unassailable, but because life ended before they were thoroughly strained.

Cultures adapted accordingly. In parts of Europe, children were not named until they survived their first years, a quiet acknowledgment that attachment was risky when loss was likely. Grief was not avoided, but it was normalized. Life was fragile by default. Expecting permanence, fairness, or long-term fulfillment was unrealistic.

Against that backdrop, Christianity made sense—not as fantasy, but as adaptation. The Gospel’s structure aligns closely with youthful cognition: urgency, moral clarity, sharp distinctions between good and evil, imminent resolution, reward and punishment. These are not flaws. They are features of a belief system shaped in a world where time horizons were short and mortality was unavoidable.

This does not prove Christianity false. It does not disprove God. It explains why belief took hold so powerfully and spread so effectively. A theology that promised meaning beyond an early grave addressed the most pressing human fear of its era.

Longevity changes the question.

Modern humans now live long enough to accumulate decades of unresolved suffering. Injustice is not a brief episode but a recurring condition. Illness stretches on. Prayers go unanswered not once, but repeatedly. Loss is not a single event; it becomes layered. Faith must endure not a few defining trials, but a lifetime of them.

What once functioned as survival theology begins to strain under extended memory.

A belief system that promises justice “in the end” is harder to sustain when the end keeps receding. A theology built around imminent redemption feels thinner when suffering is prolonged rather than acute. The problem is not that faith encounters doubt; it is that faith must now coexist with long-term evidence that the world does not reliably conform to religious assurances.

This is where the biblical definition of faith becomes unavoidable. Faith is not supported by consistent empirical confirmation. It persists despite contradiction. History does not clearly favor the righteous. Institutions that claim divine authority have repeatedly inflicted harm. The heavens, when called upon, are silent as often as they are consoling.

Human testimony about God is fragmented and contradictory, shaped by culture, power, and circumstance. Claims about divine action vary wildly across time and geography. What is presented as universal truth is often indistinguishable from local adaptation.

If God exists as singular, omnipotent, and benevolent, that reality is not observable in outcomes. It is asserted in texts and traditions, defended by interpretation, and sustained by choice. That does not make belief meaningless—but it does make it costly.

Faith persists against evidence, not because of it.

This clarification matters. It strips belief of its false marketing. Faith is not certainty. It is not assurance. It is not reinforced by history’s balance sheet. Faith is the decision to trust in the absence of confirmation, to continue believing when lived experience offers no guarantee that belief will be rewarded.

For earlier generations, the cost of that decision was lower. Life was shorter. The ledger closed quickly. For modern believers, the cost is higher. Faith must endure not only tragedy, but duration. It must withstand the slow erosion of expectations across decades.

Belief may still be meaningful. It may still provide orientation, community, or moral grounding. But it is no longer simple—and never should have been. To pretend otherwise is to confuse inherited comfort with earned conviction.

Faith survives not because the world proves God’s promises, but because humans continue choosing belief in a world that often contradicts them. That choice deserves honesty about what it asks and what it costs.

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