Do you believe this stuff? Really?
“The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29)
Consider Belief as one leg of a three-legged stool supporting the life of faith. The other legs are Love (Agape, as in “if I do not have love, then I am nothing”) and Power (that provided by and through the Holy Spirit).
Think of these as exclusively/uniquely essential for a faith that is alive, the same as heat, oxygen, and fuel are for fire; if any one of those is missing, there is no fire. Another analogy would be the theological one of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as all mystically one in the same God, although God is infinitely greater in all ways than legs on a stool.
So the pillars of a viable faith are:
- Belief
- Love
- Power
Note that doctrines, teachings, traditions, ways of life, or even scripture are not among the stool legs. None of these is an essential stool leg as they, unlike the three listed components, are finite in scope, space and time. The organized church did not exist until long after the era of the Apostles. Church doctrines and traditions developed gradually over time, and too often were influenced by worldly motives sometimes with bloodshed (very un-Christian). Ways of life varied from that of reclusive monks to Calvinistic legalized greed, with none of those practical for civilization as a whole. The canon of Christian scripture (including the Hebrew scriptures it is based on) is full of baffling ambiguities and contradictions even for those who proclaim its “inerrancy,” and its misuse for worldly purposes continues unabated. (However, scripture used properly in the context of holy belief is an indispensable tool and benchmark, similar to a buoy in a busy shipping channel.)
Of the three stool legs, Love and Power arguably are provided by God. Although humans clearly can love, and we have a degree of power, we are not the source of the Love and Power needed for a viable faith. Humans do provide the Belief component, but it must work in concert with the other two stool legs or there is still no viable faith. The humanistic good advice of “believe in yourself and you will succeed” is as much a matter of determination and grit as it is belief, and this is wholly different from the Belief discussed here.
The stool leg Belief is not sourced from brain synapses, which includes belief arrived at through logic. Anyone’s belief is irrelevant if the cause of the belief is faulty or does not exist. This is a core argument that atheists correctly make about much of the religious belief they criticize. There also is no Belief if the logic of the cognitive brain is influenced by the reptilian brain, something that is integral to our carnal and worldly human makeup. The use of logic necessarily includes the errors and incompleteness of the information we possess, and thus belief based on that is not trustworthy. Not only will humans never know everything there is to know, but much of the knowledge we do have is critically flawed. No one can believe in Christ solely because they have information, even “big data.” Preaching is effective only when God the Holy Spirit acts in conjunction with it.
Data can be a distraction to Belief. “Big Data” has many practical uses in worldly endeavors and in some cases is indispensable for success including those for good works. But it is not the foundation of a viable faith; if logic and reason constitute the sole foundation on one’s belief, then that is not faith. Although information cannot lead to faith, like scripture it can provide signposts along the way. Our bodies and minds have a role in Belief, but we do not attain it through effort based on our bodies or minds; they are the hull and passengers of the ship of faith, but are neither its engine nor its pilot.
Just as brain synapses involved in logic and learning cannot be the source of true Belief, neither can synapses involved in emotions, feelings, or even hunches. “It feels right” should come with a big red flag, prompting one to search for the actual causes of the feelings. Those feelings could be normal, healthy, justified, and worthy of humanistic belief; but they are part of our human selves and are not foundational for faith.
Accordingly, mere assent or agreement with a postulation or resonance with a feeling is not the same thing as the belief of faith. Winning a debate about belief and faith using logic is also irrelevant, for the reasons stated above. This is acutely manifested in the limitation of synapse based thought to its finite constraints of space and time. Once our bodies are dead, it is game over for the synapse based being; atheists are spot on with this point, and there is nothing to argue about it. Even if our bodies could be freeze dried or our mental processes saved off into some digital archive, they would still have the same temporal limitations that they do now; thus from an eternal and spiritual perspective, there would be no point in going to such lengths to so preserve them. In that context, trying to achieve eternal life through “building bigger barns” for our temporal existence is the ultimate fool’s errand. We must therefore pursue, embrace, and cultivate that part of us that is eternal. Our spiritual and eternal vitality is not sourced from our temporal carnal existence (although it may nourish the wholesome part of it).
Beware of pointless musing about the specifics of any bodily form we may find ourselves in on the other side of death, as that is irrelevant for this discussion; our access to eternity is through spiritual engagement. Science has declared conclusively that it addresses only the temporal realm, its only “reality;” and scientists wisely have not declared that they know “where all this stuff came from in the first place” (i.e. what is the origin of the material in the Big Bang). In that regard science, perhaps unwittingly, serves the spiritual by eschewing foolish uninformed speculation about things we carnal humans are inately ignorant of. From a practical standpoint, if humans want to “save” the temporal, the only option for us to do that is to look to and engage the Creator spiritually.
So if both reason and emotions are eliminated as sources and engines of belief, how is one to Believe as an act of “the work of God?” What we in our humanness can contribute is what I would call a soulful desire (uncompelled by anything outside of one’s self) to believe. This is different from a desire to be tricked, fooled, and told sweet little lies so as to falsely feel spiritually secure. Although we humans are clearly blessed with deep spirituality (for those who are wise enough to pursue it), we need to engage that spirituality with one greater than ourselves. And even though others can help us along the way, the one we must engage and spiritually embrace is our Creator (the Father through his triune counterparts in Christian parlance). No one less than the Creator of the universe will do for this.
The way to know if one has constructively engaged our Creator has nothing to do with our reasoning or our feelings. The confirmation takes the form of a spiritual “be still, and know” (Psalm 46:10) sense that has no source in any part of our carnal being, except as a manifestation of the spiritual that is separate from it. This leads to a “I know the one in whom I have put my trust” (2 Timothy 1:12) state of spirituality. The door to that state of being is in seeking to worship God in “spirit and truth” (John 4:17-24). Note that there is no carnal sourcing for such a state. This mutual “abiding” with and in God our Creator is the essence of viable belief; without “abiding,” there is no eternal life, as such abiding and belief are in a certain way part of the same thing.
Then by Believing as “the work of God,” one will be “the light of the world” causing others to give glory to God (Matthew 5:14-16). Love and Power follow with Belief to provide a vibrant joyful Faith. Consider it axiomatic that “the one who believes in [Jesus] will also do the works that [he did] and, in fact, will do greater works than these.” (John 14:12) Note that the “doing” element is integral to this belief; this is a prominent clue regarding the nature of the belief of faith. There is no greater service than this to God and our fellow humans.