One of the boldest things any human being can do is to stand in front of someone else and say, “This is what I believe.” We listen, whether we are inclined to believe the same thing or not.
Belief in God and in the truths of God is a distinctive experience. It is to say, “I have come to a certain conviction. I have listened, I have watched, I have thought about it. I now believe I know something I did not before. And it isn’t so much that I have chosen to believe as that belief has been born in me by a reality greater than myself. I have a sense of certitude, and my next steps in life will be different for it. I am carried along by this truth.”
Many people today have heard that belief in this sense is not possible anymore, that we know better than that now. To say that you absolutely believe in something or someone is to be certain where there is no certainty. It is to risk being a social pariah because to say you absolutely know something will prove anti-social to at least somebody along the way. One thing is certain, these people say, be suspicious of certainty. And they are quite certain about this uncertainty.
The Thing We Believe is Larger Than Ourselves
But belief is not about us. The true believer doesn’t focus on himself, saying, I believe this. Rather, he or she says, I believe this. The more focus there is on the experience of believing, the greater the risk that we can believe something just for the sake of believing.
Belief is not just about knowing; it is about trusting. True faith in God is one of the most intimate personal states a person can find himself or herself in. It is not just about gathering and processing information, otherwise a computer would be a “believer” of sorts. Because there is so much information to process, so many voices to listen to, so many topics that get thrown in our faces everyday, we use up most of our “belief energy” just sorting it all out. In the contemporary world, believing becomes calculating, and drawing a sum. We forget that the most important belief in life is a decision not about what, but about whom. Faith says, this God I can trust.
When we believe, when we trust, we are the most human we ever are, because we are actively connecting with our Creator, anchoring ourselves in his unchangeable nature. Knowing and trusting a friend or a spouse projects us into a world larger than ourselves—and how much more when we know and trust the God who made us and loves us with an irrepressible love.
But whom should we believe? And why? Which God? Which religion? Which doctrine?
Stunned by the Unexpected
Have you ever had the experience of being outdoors somewhere, turning a corner, and being stunned by a scene you were not expecting, nor could have imagined?
Years ago my wife and I were hiking in a beautiful place in the Scottish highlands called Glen Nevis. The narrow green valley was pleasant as we followed a stream, looking up the sides of the mossy rocky sides of the mountains. But then we turned a corner, far out enough on the trail to be alone, and the valley lay out like a green carpet with the biggest mountain at the end and a single silvery ribbon waterfall tracing down the mountain. We realized that the sound of the waterfall had been slowly growing in volume as we walked the path, but we weren’t expecting that thin tower of water.
Another time, when we took our children on a family trip to the Grand Canyon, I didn’t realize how close we were. The land lay flat along the road we followed. Signs read, “Grand Canyon,” but I couldn’t see anything grand at all. We saw a parking spot at a viewing station, pulled the car over, and went to the railing. There below us was an amazing alien world. A vast sunken cavity in which people that looked like specks hiked along the ridges and shelves going deeper into the crevasse. It was like stumbling into a whole other world. One of my kids expressed astonishment, summing it all up in the simplest way, “Man, that’s big.” I couldn’t resist. “Yes, maybe that’s why they call it the Grand Canyon!” They looked at me with that look that said, “Yes, this is the kind of comment we teenagers have to put up with on family vacations.”
Time and again people responded to Jesus’ words with speechless astonishment. Perhaps as they listened to Jesus’ teaching, they occasionally found themselves turning a corner and stunned by a vista of reality that was bigger and grander than they had imagined. Not everyone who heard Jesus became believers because we all have personal agendas that can hold us in disbelief. But everyone who did hear had to grapple with the power of what he said, and they had to decide what to do with the authoritative voice with which he spoke—an authority that did not come from a booming microphone or spotlights or banners, but from the ring of truth in the words themselves, backed up by every action he performed.
The gospel writers make it clear that one of the outstanding features of Jesus’ ministry was that he freely and naturally exercised this authority. People sensed that they were under the immediate influence of God. Jesus’ words struck at the heart; they were clear, strong, unequivocal, simple, and mysterious. They both wounded and healed, and when they did wound, they offered immediate healing as well. His words still stick in people’s minds and keep moving across the landscape of history like a cyclone. That’s why almost everybody, including even proponents of other religions, show respect for the thunder and lightning of Jesus’ teaching.
Respect and Response
But showing respect is one thing; responding is another. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus talked about one man who built a house on a rock foundation and another whose house rested on a bed of unstable sand. The house-on-sand person hears Jesus’ words only, whereas the house-on-rock person hears and practices. Respect plus response. It was right after this tale of two builders that Matthew mentions the people’s astonishment at Jesus’ authority. The people were not saying, “Did you hear what this fellow is trying to assert?” They were swept up in the power of the Word himself. His authority carried them, and it carries us still. It summons us not just to listen, but to act.
House building is a metaphor for life. Christ does not assert authority so that he can push his weight around. God doesn’t impose commands so that he can have a bevy of mindless followers. His is an act of grace. These authoritative words come to us because God knows there is so much we need to learn about life. Ignorance may not be a sin, but it is an extraordinarily dangerous way to live.
When someone asks, “Why should I believe what Christianity teaches?” or, “Why should I believe the specific things taught about personal ethics, and life after death, and God’s providence in history, and angels, and failure?” the answer he or she deserves is that followers of Jesus Christ believe such things (knowing and trusting) because they believe they have heard an authoritative voice on the matters. Christ summons, and the oracles of prophets and the writings of apostles are Holy Scripture—the exhalation of God’s own Spirit.
I participated once in a discussion with someone about psychic knowledge, and the person commented, “I could believe that.” I wondered, what does she mean, “I could believe that”? Thinking, “I could believe that,” is a short step from “I want to believe that,” which is one more short step from “I choose to believe that.” “But why believe something just because you think you could?” I wondered. Isn’t the question, should I believe that?
That is the reason why we need authority.
I could believe that once there was a land called Atlantis; the romanticism and mystery of it is titillating. I could believe it just because I want to believe it. I could believe that intelligent beings from other galaxies are living in my community right now. (I can even think of a few likely names.) I could believe that cancer is caused by cold winters because someone wrote a book claiming it once. But what should I believe? Shouldn’t my beliefs line up with reality?
Frighteningly, many people today don’t care whether their beliefs line up with reality. If their beliefs have a pleasing or useful effect in life, then they go ahead and hold onto them. They don’t worry about whether they are grounded in truth or not. It’s too much of a hassle to conform beliefs to the form of reality, and certainly inconvenient to risk conflict with someone else’s beliefs. Besides, these people ask, is there any such thing as truth, anyway?
But we all know, really, that we can’t live that way. We don’t live that way. When we receive a bank statement on our accounts, we assume that the transactions line up with the reality of our actual deposits and withdrawals. In fact, we assume that they line up precisely, that the balance is not a whimsical number a bank official decided to put on the statement. When someone is on trial for murder we assume that the careful process of deliberation will produce a verdict that is true. If a doctor tells you that he believes a growth in your abdomen is completely benign and thus does not require surgery, you want to know that this is not an arbitrary opinion on his part because his schedule is too booked to fit in another surgery. You don’t want the doctor thinking, “I could believe it’s benign.”
But, some will argue, it is different with religious beliefs because they are not as objective as legal and medical and financial matters. We shouldn’t go looking for religious authority because no one should dare call anybody else wrong or have the audacity to say that you have found spiritual truth.
But if we’re honest, we’ve got to say there really is a Creator or there isn’t.
Says Who?—Says God
The issue of authority always comes back to the matter of “who” rather than “what.” Who is this oncologist I’m going to see? Who is this political pundit offering a comprehensive analysis of conflicts in the Middle East? Who is this person asking me to vote for him or her for political office?
Do you remember when you were a kid and someone told you something you resisted or doubted? How often we would reply,“Says who?” And we especially said, “Says who?” when it was someone asserting some kind of authority over us. It always comes back to the same place: “Who?” Almost anybody can be right once in a while, which is why the search for truth isn’t based on a what. As someone once said, even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
But if you find the right “who,” the person who is right not just by accident or by passing fair judgment, but because truth is at the core of that person’s being, then you’ve found proper authority in life.
Now here is the best part about acknowledging God as the absolute authority over all matters of truth: God pulls all the pieces of belief together. The reality of God, of the human race, of the natural world, of good and evil, of purpose, all fits together into a house you can live in. If you pick up a book about French or about maintaining your car or about building an airplane, you assume page 12 will not contradict page 98. One part of the book will not deny what another part has asserted. If there is one author, with one intent and consistent knowledge, then the body of information he offers is a harmonious whole.
Christianity does not offer bits and scraps of disconnected truths or mere sentiments. If one thing is true—really, unalterably true—then it fits with all the other truths we pick up as pieces along the way, and an amazing picture emerges. And this knowledge does not contradict scientific knowledge. A good astrophysicist and a good theologian are really doing the same thing: passionately seeking to discover the way things really are. What they pick up along the way may seem sometimes to pull in different directions, but ultimately what is true is true. And it all fits.
A Prayer: Lord, help me to trust that what you say is absolutely true. Allow me in the weeks to come to have an experience with your words in Scripture that instructs, informs, inspires, and guides me. May your word be a bright light shining on my path. And when I, in my stubborn way, think that I know better than you, please guide me back to the safe harbor of your truth.