Like most mainline congregations, my Methodist church has experienced a steady decline in active membership over the last few decades. Recently, I served on a committee to address issues of church health and growth. Our task was to define a compelling vision for our congregation by identifying “what a disciple from our congregation should look like.”
“A seeker, intellectually curious,” one person offered.
“Yes, yes,” came the unanimous affirmation from the rest of the room. We recalled our denomination’s traditional commitment to open-mindedness. Someone wrote “SEEKER” on the blackboard.
“A worshipper,” called out another.
“Of course, yes,” everyone nodded in assent, surely thinking about how well we worship at our traditional 11:00 A.M. service. ”WORSHIPPER” went up on the board.
“A servant, one who cares for ‘the least of these,’” someone else said.
“Yes, yes, yes!” came the overwhelming response. Heads nodded vigorously as we remembered the acts of charity routinely performed by our downtown congregation. Someone wrote “SERVANT” in large letters on the board.
Caught up in the moment, I blurted out, “What about … a believer?”
The room fell silent. Blank faces stared back at me. I was suddenly aware of the crickets chirping outside. Finally, someone slowly said, “Yeah…a believer.”
How did we end up in this absurd position: earnestly worshipping and happily serving a God we are reluctant to believe in?
Surely, the causes are numerous. Many of us distinctly remember that moment, probably freshman year at college, when we realized that the simplistic, overly literal understanding of God, Scripture, and faith of our youth could not withstand the battering force of dispassionate academic inquiry. Duly chastened, we have since avoided any claims on absolute “Truth,” and have absorbed the post-modern tenet that objective Truth is either non-existent or unknowable. Indeed, many of us have come to regard even the attempt to discover any objective Truth as silly, unsophisticated, and even offensive.
Others of us have become skittish when it comes to placing too much stock in any belief, for fear that it will be proven false by the next discovery of the Information Age. And ditto for our unprecedented access into the private lives of some so-called Christian “leaders” who have proven to be deeply flawed hypocrites at best, and outright charlatans at worst.
So our aversion to “belief” is understandable – but it is not excusable. Whatever our personal impediments to belief, Scripture makes it clear that there simply can be no meaningful Christian discipleship without some element of belief. John flatly states: “Whoever believes in him [Christ] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:18 (TNIV)). And who can forget Jesus’s pointed questioning of his disciples: “But what about you? Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15).
Simply put, belief in God through Christ is the foundation on which all of our attempts at discipleship rest. Without belief, our worship is meaningless and our service is impotent. So we must learn how to believe again – but how?
- Put belief in its place.
The contemporary instinct against talk of “belief” may be rooted in a growing frustration with the still-dominant American theology that reduces Christian salvation to a transaction for “fire insurance”: “believe this and punch your ticket to heaven – rather than hell.” (So-called “prosperity theology,” as preached by so many televangelists, is the smiley-faced cousin of this view of Christianity.)
Many serious disciples justifiably recoil from such a narrow-minded and self-centered view of salvation. God’s saving work in us and in the world does not end with a simple profession of belief. While we are “saved by grace” (Ephesians 2:8), we recognize, as James said, that “faith without deeds is dead.” (James 2:26).
But we should be careful not to toss out the baby with the bathwater. Belief may not be a sufficient condition for Christian discipleship, but it remains a necessary one. Indeed, faith without good works may be hollow, but to do good works without a foundation in belief is to forfeit the awesome power of faith that, according to Jesus, makes all things possible. (Matthew 17:20). We should rightfully resist attempts to reduce the Gospel message to a simple “believe-in-your-heart-and-be-saved” bumper sticker, but we must not ignore Christ’s query: “Who do you say that I am?” Without belief in God’s saving work through Christ, Christianity is reduced to just another do-gooder philosophy. And that is not the Gospel message.
- Understand that Christian belief does not require the suspension of your mental faculties.
Our intellectual abilities are gifts from God, and surely God does not expect us to ignore them. Christian belief does not, for example, mandate a “young earth” view of the origins of life, outright rejection of evolutionary biology, or a blind eye to archaeological discoveries.
For those Christians who feel challenged by the modern advances of biology, I recommend Dr. Frances Collins’s recent book, The Language of God. Collins – who led the Human Genome Project, which essentially unlocked the human genetic code – strongly defends the theory of evolution while maintaining an ardent Christian faith. For those whose questions are more philosophical, Tim Keller’s The Reason for God provides honest, head-on responses to many postmodern objections to Christianity. And any Christian who has not taken the time to read and absorb C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity should immediately stop reading this article and promptly obtain a copy of Lewis’s masterpiece.
Indeed, Christ himself invited us to examine the underpinnings of our beliefs, rather than to stop merely with the literal words of Scripture. When several Pharisees criticized Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, Jesus responded, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” (Luke 14:5). Likewise, in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus repeatedly went beyond the literal words of Scripture to reveal the deeper lessons behind those words. (Matthew 5).
My point is that modern Christians should not feel that they must choose between faith and reason. To be sure, all religious belief, including Christianity, requires some element of faith, a willingness to accept as true certain things that simply cannot be proven – or disproven – by science or reason. But so does non-belief. As Keller skillfully illustrates in his book, “All doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternate beliefs.” All of us believe in something, some “truths” that cannot be completely verified empirically. Christians should take comfort in the fact that countless first-rate Christian intellectuals have thoroughly examined the foundations of their Christian beliefs, and we should acquaint ourselves with their compelling defenses of the faith.
- Accept that belief does not mean the absence of all doubt at all times.
Finally, we should accept that doubt is a natural symptom of belief. Here the Webster’s definition of “belief” is instructive: “partial or full assurance without positive knowledge or absolute certainty.”
Recall the story from Mark 9, when a distraught father brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus to be healed. The father pleaded with Jesus, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” Jesus retorted, “‘If you can’? Everything is possible for one who believes.” The father’s response is golden: “I do believe! Help me overcome my unbelief!” This was enough for Jesus – he healed the boy. (Mark 9:14-29).
That should be our prayer to God: “I believe – help my unbelief.” Christian discipleship requires faith, but we should not be ashamed when we experience doubt. Nor should we feel as if we must go it alone: in the spirit of the searching shepherd, the expectant father of the prodigal son, God rushes out to meet us more than halfway. God has provided us with the comforting words of Scripture, the tradition of the Christian saints who have shown us faith in action, the awesome power of our personal encounters with God, and the intellectual ability to examine the evidence of Christ’s ministry, sacrifice, and resurrection.
Despite our understandable aversions to talk of “belief,” we continue to recite the Apostles’ Creed, or some variation of it, every Sunday. We should take those words seriously, always remembering that belief is the crucial foundation of discipleship. And then, we can seek, worship, and serve a God and a Savior in whom we actually, you know, believe.
[...] 3, 2009 by jmeunier Jack Burden, a newer member of the God blogosphere, wrote a thoughtful piece about “belief” and the skittishness some Christians have about that word – especially some of we mainline [...]
Came here from John Meunier’s Blog.
Two comments:
1) Don’t think that earnest belief in God, Jesus, the Trinity or in the necessity of a Christian conversion for one’s salvation will ’save’ a church from declining numbers. Many of the small churches (’small’ here is 10 to 25) in our circuit are full of such earnest believers.
2) Christianity is still seen to define ‘belief’ as the opposition of what Richard Dawkins believes. Christianity has long known that it can neither fully describe God or fully know God this side of The Kingdom. We have to get away from our modernist ‘ontological’ arguments and somehow translate the ancient art of ‘narrative as truth’ into a way of understanding that our culture can grasp. (I have no idea how to do this!)
Pam,
Thanks so much for stopping by, reading my post, and even taking the time to write a thoughtful comment.
My quick thoughts on your thoughts:
1) I hope my post didn’t seem to imply that “belief” in certain doctrines would “save a church from declining numbers.” Rather, my goal was to point the way back toward belief because, as disciples, we are called upon by Christ to answer that question: “But who do you say that I am?” As I said above, belief is not a sufficient condition for discipleship, but surely it is a necessary one — keeping in mind, of course, my final point: that belief is not the absence of all doubt.
2) I can’t say I agree with this: “Christianity is still seen to define ‘belief’ as the opposition of what Richard Dawkins believes.” Most people have no idea who Richard Dawkins is, and couldn’t care less what he has to say.
But they know that the foundation of the Christian faith is the risen Christ — that Jesus made certain claims about himself that these people called “Christians” purport to believe. To steal from another post of mine, it was the Jewish theologian Rabbi Abraham Heschel that said, “Jesus Christ is of no importance unless he is of supreme importance.”
Paul might add: Jesus is only of “supreme importance” if he was the resurrected Savior — otherwise, “if Christ has not been raised, your preaching is useless and so is your faith.”
It’s either true, or it is not. As Christians, we believe it is true, and we are charged with spreading this Good News to the ends of the earth.
Grace and peace to you,
Jack
Hi Jack:
1) I didn’t really think you were advocating belief as ’salvation’ for church numbers, but I often hear it bandied about as such. Over here in the UK where the general culture is most decidedly post-Christian, there is a line that people take that says if only churches were really being faithful the the Gospel, they would be full. Whereas I see lots of small churches full of genuinely faithful people.
2) The question you’ve answered doesn’t sound like what I thought I said. It doesn’t matter to the point that I was trying to make whether a person knows Richard Dawkins or not (although he’s getting close to celebrity status here). My point was that I think a lot of Christianity today tries to beat science at it’s own game. You and I may disagree on this one. I don’t think that there is any way of evidentially ‘proving’ the existence of God or of evidentially ‘proving’ that Jesus has brought salvation to humanity. And I don’t think those who wrote the bible operated in a culture where ‘truth’ and ‘facticity’ were the same thing. The mantra that I hear from non-church people over here is that ‘faith is for children’. And they believe this because they see belief in Christianity as being on the same order as belief in Santa Claus or the Easter bunny. Hitting people forcefully with ‘It’s either true or it’s not’ will elicit the response ‘Well, it’s obviously NOT true!’
Pam,
Thanks again for your comment.
1) I see your point here, and largely agree with you.
2) Actually, I bet we agree here more than you think.
Like you, I certainly do not think that we can “prove” God’s existence, Christ’s divinity, atonement, or resurrection — nor do I think that Christianity, properly understood, makes such a claim. It seems axiomatic that the tools of science have no use outside of the material world, and whatever or whomever God is, God exists apart and above the material or observable world. Indeed, if Christianity could be “proved,” concepts like “faith” would be meaningless. That’s the thrust of my post, at least in part.
We may part ways a little bit regarding your last point. Truth — both the concept and the actual thing — exists whether we acknowledge it or not. Truth may be unknowable, partly knowable, or fully knowable, but our ability to ascertain it has nothing to do with whether it exists. (Gravity existed prior to Newton.) No matter how much post-modern hocus-pocus we absorb, we will never shake our innate belief in objective Truth. We’re hardwired for it — we would never have survived this long without it.
You suggest that the response — “well, it’s obviously NOT true!” — is a discussion-ender. Why should it be? Isn’t the obvious riposte, “Well, why is it so ‘obviously NOT true’?” To respond that God (or God’s nature, etc.) cannot be proven by science is to answer a question that no one is asking (or that any conscious person shouldn’t be asking) — it’s like saying that the color blue doesn’t exist because I can’t smell it. This is where Timothy Keller really shines: in exposing the fact that all of us — believers and skeptics — bring our own assumptions to the table.
By no means do I fetishize apologetics. I am the first to recognize its limitations; again, I prefer a “belief means doubt” approach to faith. But I do think that apologetics has a role, so nicely explained by William Lane Craig as “giving people the intellectual permission to believe when their hearts are moved.”
In sum, I would never argue that Christianity should seek to beat science at its own game. But Christians should call out science when it purports to play a game it is not equipped to play.
[...] I had written — it’s more than worth your time. Henry was prompted by this post on “bringing back belief.” Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Fascinating Comma Usage!!Henry James and the [...]
It seems axiomatic that the tools of science have no use outside of the material world, and whatever or whomever God is, God exists apart and above the material or observable world. Indeed, if Christianity could be “proved,” concepts like “faith” would be meaningless. That’s the thrust of my post, at least in part.
Oh good. Then I wasn’t hallucinating.
That’s how I originally understood your post. And I think we’re saying very similar things and I’m not communicating well.
Truth — both the concept and the actual thing — exists whether we acknowledge it or not. Truth may be unknowable, partly knowable, or fully knowable, but our ability to ascertain it has nothing to do with whether it exists. (Gravity existed prior to Newton.) No matter how much post-modern hocus-pocus we absorb, we will never shake our innate belief in objective Truth. We’re hardwired for it — we would never have survived this long without it.
I agree with all of the above. What I’m trying to say is that I’m searching for a way to communicate this in a way that doesn’t sound like the equivalent of trying to convince someone to believe in the Easter Bunny.
And I think that we Christians either try to ‘beat modernism at it’s own game’ by trying to give evidential or philosophical proof for God or we simply try to ‘bash’ people into belief by threatening them or by ridiculing them. Both approaches seem more than unsatisfactory to me. Especially operating in a culture where there are now two or three generations of people who literally have absolutely no background whatsoever in any Christian stories or vocabulary but who call themselves ‘Church of England’. This is very different from my upbringing in the US where people might not go to church but they know at least some basic ideas (possibly inaccurately!)
I’m emphatically NOT trying to stop the conversation at ‘Well, it’s obviously not true.’ I’m trying to continue it in a way that makes sense to a person who thinks that ‘faith is for children and we outgrow belief in God in the same way we outgrow belief in Santa Claus’ and who doesn’t know any of the ‘Christian stories’.
I’m just saying that I have not yet discovered anyone who actually does this very well. And I don’t think I do either! As a life-long Christian, it’s hard to break out of my own vocabulary and thought-forms.