Why Believe?
1st Published, October 4, 2024
2nd edition, November 1, 2024
It’s tough to believe God, Jesus, and the Bible… not sometimes, but all the time. Why? Our hearts are hard and our minds are closed and our experiences are limited to what we can see and touch.
Simple enough answer.
Still, life is not always a matter of simplicity, is it? It usually ends up being quite complicated, doesn’t it?
Still and all, in many ways we ourselves make life complicated, and we often don’t even consider any right or wrong construct. At times, we even quickly make decisions just for convenience sake. When shopping, for example, we make snap decisions on what to buy simply because somebody or something has “sold us” on the product. We believe it has value for us.
Believing something has value for us, just doesn’t work in the same way, or as easily, when it comes to believing God, Jesus, and the Bible… We ask, “What value do they have for me?” At the same time, we seem to need a lot more of convincing, before we will accept anything they have to say… and I think, rightly so… Easy come… easy go.
So, let me start out by discussing this quote from the Bible:
“… righteousness is given through {the faithfulness of} Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between {people and cultures}, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” — Romans 3:22–24, New International Version, {with my edits influenced by the Greek text}.
There’s a lot to discuss there. So, first, does anyone reject that basic assertion that we’ve all made mistakes — some being more serious than others? Those more serious mistakes, which the Bible calls “sins,” cause hurts and harm to others as well as to ourselves. “Sure,” one may respond, “It’s possible to look at sin that way.” Yet, until we are enabled to go beyond what we can see and touch, we are unable to resolve that dilemma of always making those more serious mistakes which also generate crippling guilt…
Still and all, in the verse I quoted, the Bible claims that Jesus has paved the way to do exactly that… to help us get over the hump, in a manner of speaking… to get us freed up from the chains of guilt… and beyond that, Jesus has the ability to give us a new nature which we can exercise to be both aware of our sinful nature and grow until we are free of it!
In this essay, I would like to point out the lack of effectiveness in intellectual acknowledgment regarding the Bible’s veracity — that is, its truthfulness, accuracy, and reliability — while also comparing Man’s knowledge to be insignificant to a change of heart generated by turning to God. What seals the deal is gratefully following in a mindful pursuit of the Gospel’s message.
To put it straight: That ain’t easy.
Still and all, it is possible.
However, any strictly intellectual discussion can only result in more and more discussions, point and counterpoint, extending into infinity.
To illustrate, let me take something from everyday living: A person might say, “Wait until you taste the fish fry at this restaurant!” but gets the response “Aaaa… Not tonight. I’m going over to Joe’s Bar & Grill and grab some chicken wings.” There’s like a million food offerings out there, and if your opinion doesn’t persuade me to try one… the discussion might become a wider subject discussing all those different items on the menus of lots of different restaurants, and arguing about which is tastiest… and so on.
I can acknowledge that this is a difficult concept to receive. Neither is it an easy path to follow, or simply just to decide to follow down that road.
We have to give it some serious thought, but without procrastination.
So, let me try to put it in a completely different way.
First, we have come to use organs in the body allegorically. as centers for our different natural characteristics. For example, when someone is “lily livered,” the liver is associated with courage or lack thereof. We can associate our skeleton with our willingness to stand up for ourselves — not unlike the liver’s attributes. There are, of course others, like when a person “lacks heart” to mean lacking courage and perseverance. Or this, which is kind of a generalized association, “He has no guts.”
I’m sure you get my drift.
It’s interesting to me that the Greek culture associated the mind with the inner man, while the Semite culture associated the heart as the center of the inner person. It seems to me that in both examples, the inner person is accepted as the most important and essential quality and often is referred to as the human “spirit” or “soul.”
I would guess that that has made the distinction of emphasis of the two cultures in their general existential and philosophical pursuits between what a person thinks, what a person feels, and what a person does — or in another way of speaking, their temperament, their sensibilities, and their outlook on life.
What it boils down to is choosing what to believe.
“So, what difference does it make for me?” one might ask.
Maybe the answer is that it matters in our approach to God, Jesus, and the Bible, and possibly in deciding to make a commitment to them Maybe it depends on whether you hope there’s eternity or if there’s nothing after our physical death… Is there eternity or isn’t there?
I would say, it then makes a great deal of difference, because it affects our essential response to our daily living, the Gospel of Jesus, God the Father, and the importance of the entire Bible!
Here is the Bible’s challenge: Believing the Gospel of Jesus demands a response. One cannot just respond with, “That’s cool man!” its demands exceed such a flippant response, beyond our “intellectual” reaction.
First, both John the Baptist and Jesus Himself preached, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” In other words, recognize our place in eternity and our sinfulness by a turning away from what we are doing to what God wants us to be doing.
“And what would cause me to make such a radical move?”
“The need for a radical change in your life!” would be my answer.
Also, this follow up is required: “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” Don’t continue doing what you have always been doing. (“Doing what you have always been doing and expecting different results,” is one definition of insanity,) Instead, turn to doing God’s work. This precept is set up in Matthew, chapter 3, and here is a clarification of what defines that work in Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” Therefore, a change of mind and a change of heart and a change of behavior are all requisites when you start to believe.
Now, I don’t want to confuse: Doing God’s work only comes after submitting to God’s rule in your hearts. Otherwise, we only keep repeating the prior-mentioned downward spiral of insanity.
You don’t have to be apprehensive, however, because there is plenty of guidance and encouragement in the Bible. In fact there is an everflowing stream for you and to support your decision to believe. The Spirit of God is always helping, guiding,, comforting. enlightening, and healing within ourselves and in doing the same outside of ourselves…
All in all, in the end, the decision to believe God, Jesus,and the Bible will explode with revelation, because Reality will set in.
So, regarding the importance of believing: “Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” — Hebrews 11:6, what this means is a person has to start somewhere, and this is the starting line. It’s been called a “step of faith.”
So, toe the line.
Please, don’t trip over it.
Still and all, the change of mind cannot be shallow. Turning to God requires deeper thought than, say, being able to quote Scriptures, or praying some rote prayer once in a while, or even attending church. It requires self examination. It requires recognizing one’s need for change. It requires the willingness to change. But the hardest part remains to be accepting Jesus as your personal Savior, because, I suppose, our egos get in the way. We tell ourselves, “I can do right well all by myself, thank you.”
This presents the most difficult of challenges: We have to admit to the fact that we have fallen short of the target, we have somehow failed in many ways, we have missed the mark which God has set before all Mankind… Don’t sin. Don’t disobey the Ten Commandments. Do no harm. Don’t hurt yourself or others. On top of all that, believe in some ancient rabbi’s teaching whom many of His own people ditched!
To many unbelievers, this all can seem to be absurd or even ridiculous… But to the believers who have been found and changed by the love of Jesus Christ, it has turned out to be very credible and exceptionally authentic.
Still and all, admitting failure needs some courage, doesn’t it?
Worse, I suppose, is the stark specter of having to admit your shortcomings to God!
People can readily and comfortably claim, “God is love!” However, we have some trouble with saying, “God is righteous and He administers justice.”
Another simple way to show this idea is in the claim, “We love flowers, but hate our allergies.”
Consequences can be much rougher than that though, can’t they? Yet, even if we have to learn the hard way ,we must learn they are inescapable.
Unfortunately our pride (and I would say, our false pride) gets in the way of any progress we could be making in coming to believe.
Any intellectual discipline will always miss the mark. We think we are deep wells of knowledge and extensive wisdom. Well, while we look into ourselves, why not look around at what all our knowledge and wisdom have produced… But I digress…
At first glance, it appears to be easy enough. All the same, what makes it so difficult for us is our intellectual pride. This is why the apostle Paul wrote this challenge, “Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has {invited}, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” — 1 Corinthians 1:20–25, NIV. {my edit from the Greek}
I want to emphasize in particular verse 21, acknowledging the difficulty I am referring to: “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.”
In short, our intellectual pride stands in the way, blocking a favorable decision to admit that we aren’t all that smart or wise or good, and we need to turn around — not spinning aimlessly — turning to Jesus to find true knowledge and real and effective wisdom.
As for a more heartfelt psychology, the same thing is true: Even in personal relationships, we want to see signs of a person’s love and commitment before we give our hearts away. We need to believe. Then we can commit.
For The same reason, God gave us this gift
“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only {begotten} Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us first and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” — 1 John 4:9&10, NIV {my edit for clarity}.
He first loved us.
Think about that.
Reach out to Jesus.
He’s reaching out for you.
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched — this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our a joy complete.”
1 John 1:1–4, NIV
