To Believe

When we talk about believing something, we often think of it as a passive kind of a thing, as if it's something we have or don't have. In fact, atheists will try to argue this very point in explaining their position. They will say that it's not so much that they don't believe, they simply don't 'have a belief' about God. We tend to think that belief is something that automatically happens when sufficient evidence for a thing is provided. This is the case in some circumstances. If I see a man steal something from a store, I automatically believe he is a thief. The evidence that I see with my own eyes makes the proposition difficult to deny. The opposite is also true sometimes. Given the lack of sufficient evidence, we simply have no belief in something. I have no belief about the existence of aliens because I haven't seen evidence for their existence, and there is no such thing as evidence against their existence. It's an area I have suspended judgement on. I have no belief either way.

The Bible exhorts us to believe in God. Mark 1:15 tells us to "repent and believe the gospel." When we as believers share our faith and the truths of our beliefs with unbelievers and they begin to reject our message, we begin trying to weave the evidences together in such a way that they will automatically believe. At least that's what we hope will happen. Just like a trial lawyer uses the evidence in court to persuade and convince the jury that a person is or is not innocent, we begin trying to piece together a sufficient amount of evidence to be persuasive with our friends, thinking that if we can put enough of it together in just the right way to answer their objections, they'll have to realize the truth of the gospel and believe.

One of the problems I see with this is that it assumes the kind of belief that we described above, the kind that we engage in passively. It's something that happens to us. But the portions of scripture that exhort us to believe in God and His gospel are saying something very different about belief. The Bible refers to it as an act of the will. It is not passive, it is purposed. It is willful and is exercised with a particular object in mind.

We have a word for this kind of belief. 


Trust.

In our culture we use both words interchangeably at times. At the altar as a man and a woman get married they will often recite vows to one another. These may include promises to love, to honor, to cherish, to forsake all others, etc. As one is verbalizing these vows, the other is listening and [hopefully] believing. This is not the same kind of belief that was described above. This is trust. The person listening to the vows is trusting their new spouse to be true to his/her word. 

When God says 'believe', He is telling us to trust Him.

Using the example of creation, we might say, "I trust God, therefore Ibelieve the earth was created by Him."

Now, here's the real issue. As we look at those verses in the Bible that refer to this kind of belief, or trust, we notice that God is not asking us to trust Him. He is telling us to trust Him. It is a command, and it only makes sense if it is indeed trust that He is talking about, and not passive belief.

So if the exhortation is a command directed at a person's will, and not a request directed at a person's ability to evaluate (reason about) evidence, then should we be so concerned with trying to persuade with well crafted arguments and evidences? I don't want to be misunderstood at this point. I'm not at all implying that reasonable arguments and proofs can't be given, or that faith and reason somehow do not go together. I am simply questioning whether our evangelistic efforts ought to appeal to a person's reason when it seems that the appeals made in the Bible are to a person's will.

But how can we expect them to trust God as an act of the will if belief in Him goes against their reason?

I don't think evidential apologetics in evangelism is completely out of order. And if a person has some real intellectual barriers to faith, evidences can help get them past those. But I will say that I think this is rarely the case. When a person says, "I can't believe because of A, B, and C" I would have to say that most of the time it is not the case that they cannot believe. Most likely, they simply don't like A, B, or C, or what they imply and therefore refuse to believe. And if they refuse to believe, then we are back to exercising the will. 

Nowhere in scripture do we see God saying "Believe! Unless you don't agree." Whether or not we agree with A, B, or C, we are still commanded to believe. To trust. And I think this is a point where many unbelievers are mistaken. They seem to assume that we as believers agree with everything in scripture. On this point they mistake submission for agreement. There are in fact things in scripture that I either don't agree with or that simply rub me the wrong way, but since I have chosen to trust God I submit myself to Him and His word in those areas. This is at the heart of Jesus' parable of the two sons in Matthew 21. One was agreeable and one wasn't, but the agreeable one disobeyed and the other obeyed. Jesus points to the fact that obedience in action, not verbal (or intellectual) agreement was the key issue.

Then God is tyrant! Only a tyrant would demand such obedience regardless of agreement.

Is He? Or is He, in fact, infinitely benevolent? Is a passenger in a car being unreasonable if he demands that the driver stop because he knows they are heading for a cliff? Of course not. Does this depend at all on whether or not the driver agrees with him? 

God knows the consequences of disobedience to Him. His command to trust Him is motivated not by some sort of tyranical desire for power, but by His loving desire to bring His creation to eternal safety and security.

And even if it wasn't, what is it that He has commanded us to trust Him with? The command to trust Him isn't without an object. It is a command to trust that He has already done all that is necessary and sufficient to pay the penalty for our sin, and that we simply need to trust that He will account that payment to us as righteousness, completely doing away with any need for us to try to pay that debt by our own merits.

Some tyrant; wanting to force liberty, justification, and freedom from death on us poor human beings!

I have had friends say to me, as we talked about faith in God, "You can'tmake me believe. No one can make me believe. It has to come from within me." They were saying this in defiance, basically saying "There's nothing you can say to convince me." But I think that ironically, in their defiance, they were actually right on both counts. There may not have been anything I could have said that would have been so irrefutable as to produce that passive kind of belief. And on the second point, they were correct also. It does have to come from within them. That's the act of the will. They have to make the decision to believe...

...to trust.